Promises
by Sabari
Summary: During a mutagen canister hunt, the turtles become separated and one of them is shot. Sometimes all it takes it one small mistake to tear a family apart.
1. Chapter 1

**Part 1 - Caged  
**"_We fell asleep and began to dream when something broke the night/  
Memories stirred inside of us, the struggle and the fight/  
And we could feel the heat of a thousand voices telling us which way to go/  
__And we cried out is there no escape..."  
__**-Drawn to the Rhythm **_**(Sarah McLachlan)**

* * *

Darkness was the ally of the ninja, the night his protector, clouds to cover the moon and stars so that he might move invisibly his ideal companion. But tonight these had all betrayed Raphael.

It had all started normally enough, if mutant ninja turtles roaming the city in search of stray canisters of mutagen could be considered normal. Donatello had been tracking a canister of mutagen, shouting badly timed instructions to Leonardo as usual. Leo had been grousing about it, as usual. Michelangelo had been not paying attention, as usual. Mikey's latest infatuation was with an aged Game Boy he'd found in the trash and somehow talked Donnie into repairing for him.

"Mikey, that Game Boy is older than you," had been Leo's remark about it.

Raph's most recent remark about it had been in the Shellraiser earlier this evening when Leo swung particularly wildly around the corner, sending the Game Boy sailing out of Mikey's hands and into the back of Raph's head.

"Mikey, that thing hits me again and I'll give it back to ya in several pieces!"

Mikey had proceeded to gather the Game Boy into his arms and speak words of comfort to it as though it was a child. Raph couldn't seem to remember now what those words had been. It didn't matter now.

The Shellraiser had come to an abrupt stop as Leo hit the brakes and shouted at Donnie in the back that he could not turn both left and right, and that the tracker better make up its mind or Leo would make its mind up for it. Donnie had explained the glitch.

Two canisters. Two different directions. Leo simmered down.

"Fine," Leo hissed through his teeth, putting a hand to his head in the way he always did when he was particularly annoyed by something he couldn't berate for being what it was, "Fine. We'll do this the hard way. Which one is closer?"

"I've got one pinned down to a five block radius. The other to about fifty feet, give or take."

"That doesn't..." Leo sighed in the long suffering way he had, "Never mind. Raph and Mikey, you take the closer one. Donnie and I will drive the Shellraiser around and try to pin down the other one."

"Uh, aren't you forgetting something?" Raph asked.

"Like what?" Leo snapped irritably.

"Like which fifty feet we're supposed to be lookin' in?" Raph replied coolly, not moving from his seat.

"Donnie, would you give Raph a location?" Leo requested, as usual annoyed by the fact that Raph had thought of something which he had forgotten.

For reasons Raph couldn't even begin to fathom, Leo had this odd notion that he was supposed to be perfect. Just because he was their leader, _he_ was supposed to somehow have all the answers. Like Splinter putting him in charge of his brothers should have somehow granted him powers he hadn't had before. It was stupid, and Raph enjoyed telling him so as often as possible.

Raph didn't usually have a point when it came to giving people a hard time. But there was one with Leo. Pushing Leo's buttons wasn't just fun, it seemed to be about the only thing that kept Leo fired up. Whenever Raph got lax in his insubordination, Leo would get complacent and lazy in his leadership. It was like Leo needed someone to butt heads with to move forward. He needed somebody to push back in order to make any kind of progress.

It was never spoken of, but generally understood between them that, so long as Leo fought back when Raph bucked his authority, Raph would keep following him. The day Leo wasn't driven into a frenzy of leadership by Raph's attitude was the day they could go home and hang up their masks for good.

"C'mon Mikey, the Game Boy isn't gonna be any more stupid and broken in ten minutes than it is now," Raph said, dragging Mikey from the Shellraiser.

Mikey only stopped trying to fight his way back to his latest treasure when the Shellraiser drove off, careering wildly down the street and launching itself around a corner, where it disappeared from sight.

The sky was cloudy, and the air felt like rain. The part of Raph that was ninja as well as the part of him that was turtle was enjoying the weather, and he could tell Mikey liked it too. They didn't walk their search area so much as run and jump it. Raph and Mikey seldom walked anywhere when doing back flips off the safety railings of fire escapes was a possibility.

Neither of them were as focused as they might have been. It was a back alley after midnight, and the promise of rain was additional incentive for normal people to stay indoors. The only sounds of activity were a couple of rats fighting over some crumb they'd found beneath a dumpster. Otherwise, all was quiet, just as it should have been.

For just a moment, Raph let himself enjoy the feeling of being above ground. Though he and his brothers had been running across rooftops for awhile now, the novelty of it seemed unlikely to ever wear off. He liked living in the sewers, being above ground after dawn always made him feel uneasy. But he liked patrolling the city from above at night. There was a freedom to it that offered a thrill which was second to none. He loved the city. He loved its noise, and its lights, and the sound of it rumbling over his head as he fell asleep after a hard night's work. It was home.

Then he looked down, and spotted Mikey rooting around in the dumpster.

"Mikey, get out of there," Raph scolded, "You know there's no canister in there."

"No, but there is this," Mikey said, triumphantly holding up a stained pair of briefs, "I can add it to my collection of human underwear."

Raph shook his head, and decided not to comment on this particularly bizarre habit of Mikey's.

"C'mon," Raph said, "It's not here. Let's keep looking."

Donnie had said somewhere within fifty feet, but Raph was beginning to have his doubts. Fifty feet wasn't a very big search area, and mutagen canisters were usually a little hard to miss.

It turned out that the canister wasn't far. It had landed in the next alley over, and rolled so it was partially concealed under the bottom steps of a fire escape. Cautiously, fully cognizant of how dangerous mutagen could be, Mikey pulled the container out by one end, examined it, and dusted it off.

"Oh hey, it's in one piece," Mikey observed cheerfully.

Raph didn't answer, momentarily entranced by the sight of the mutagen. There was just something about it... Mikey referred to the canister which had poured ooze all over them as "Mom". The feeling Raph got looking at it... he could understand the sentiment. He'd never, _ever_ say that out loud though.

He heard a quiet but sharp whistling near his head, and ducked belatedly. Something thunked into the brick wall behind him, but Raph ignored that and looked in the direction from which it had come. He could just make out the cold muzzle of a gun from the shadows, a silent form beyond it. Not Kraang. Not Foot Ninja. Not anything Raph recognized except the thing on the end of the gun. A silencer.

Mikey had his back to the danger. By unspoken agreement, Mikey had gone for the canister, and Raph had his back, and was watching the other end of the alley. As a defense mechanism, they almost invariably positioned themselves face to face or back to back, insuring that they functionally had no blind spot. Raph's brief lapse, his second of the night, could cost them their lives.

"Watch it!" Raph snarled, leaping down from his perch on a railing and landing right on top of Mikey, hitting his brother in the back of the shell and forcing him to the ground as the gun fired a second time.

Something hit him in the side of the head, bowling him over and sending him spinning, and Raph knew that the murkiness of the night had betrayed him, and he'd miscalculated the aim of the gun, which had been aiming slightly lower than he'd thought. Those same shadows that hid his form when he ducked into them had hidden the gunman when he and Mikey had entered the alley.

"Raph!" Mikey stayed down, but started to crawl towards where the impact had pitched Raph.

Pain sang through Raph's head, blood roared in his eardrums. He started to get to his feet, struggling against dizziness. Something hot and wet slithered its way under his mask and into his left eye. It burned like crazy, and trying to blink it out only made it worse.

As more shots winged through the air towards them, Mikey slammed into Raph, carrying them both to relative safety behind a dumpster, where they crouched, trembling slightly. The shots were getting louder, or it seemed that way to Raph, but he couldn't seem to find what that meant, if anything. He struggled to clear his head, and make a decision about that they should do.

"Take the canister and run," Raph said, "Take it to Leo."

Mikey began to object, "Me? You want me to-" but Raph interrupted him.

"I'm going to cover you, okay? Now, when I tell you, run. Okay? You understand? This canister _has_ to go to Leo and Donnie. Whoever the guy shooting at us is, he can't have it. Got it?"

"Well yeah, but-"

"Go!" Raph shoved Mikey so hard that he tripped, nearly dropping the canister and breaking it.

Raph leaped on top of the dumpster they had been using as cover, launching a hail of shurikens into the shadows. The double report of multiple guns firing cracked through the air. Though Raph had identified one shooter, the darkness had concealed that there were more of them.

He contained a yelp as a lance of pain slashed across his left leg, the force of impact knocking him over, sending him off the dumpster and onto the ground with a crash. Raph made no attempt to keep track of Mikey, trusting that his brother would follow his instructions, regardless of what tried to stand in his way. Raph struggled to get his feet under him, nearly blinded by the blood running down his face.

It had been obvious from the moment he'd been hit -though Raph had actually sensed it at the sound of the first shot which had so narrowly missed him- that he would not be able to escape. His vision swam, and he'd only have slowed Mikey down if they'd both run together. Mikey would have turned back to help him, and both of them would have been caught. At least this way, Mikey and the canister of mutagen stayed out of the hands of these people, whoever they were. Leo probably would have objected to Raph's plan of tricking Mikey into ditching him, but it couldn't be helped.

Besides, Leo wasn't here, though Raph could sorely have used him right now.

A hiss of wire caught his attention, and one of his arms. The loop of wire was attached to a pole being held by yet another person the shadows had hidden up to now. Raph snarled, swinging towards the offender, but a second wire found its way around his other wrist and pulled taut, hauling him backwards so suddenly he struggled for balance, inadvertently putting weight on his injured leg.

He shook his head, thunder in his ears, lightning spots in his vision.

Something whipped through the air and caught him in the neck, but it wasn't a bullet. It was a dart of some description. The world shortly began to go a little skewed and funny.

"The other one got away," one dark blur said to another.

"We'll have to make do with this one then," replied the other blur.

Raph would have fallen down at this point, but the wire and poles held him up. They were pulled tight, but it didn't really matter now. He pulled against them as best he could, which wasn't much. The owners of them heaved right back. Even if they'd let him go, he wouldn't have gotten very far, not with every bit of him slowly going numb. It was more a matter of stubbornness that kept him resisting.

"Oh man, he nailed Johnson!" shouted someone.

Breathing had become an unbearable chore in just the last few seconds. He wondered if maybe he ought to just stop. That might be easier. His lungs felt like they were made of stone.

Leo would come. Mikey would get him. And he would come. And he would... he'd make this alright. He'd stop them. He'd fix this. He'd... it would be okay.

"Not long now," said a cold, icy voice, _"Not long now."_

A terrible blackness seeped into all corners of Raph's vision, then thickly wormed its way into his mind. He was drowning in it. Disappearing beneath its dark waves. And then... nothing.

"He's out. Let's move, just in case the other one comes back with the rest of the pack."

* * *

"Leo, look out!" Donnie had shouted the warning at the same time as Leo noticed Mikey dashing out and standing in the road, waving a canister of mutagen over his head.

"Mikey, what are you doing!?" Leo exploded from the Shellraiser, "Are you trying to get-" he broke off, as sense of wrongness hitting him before he became aware of what it was that was wrong.

Then he knew. It was an absence.

"Mikey, where's Raph? Mikey, what's the matter? What happened?"

He realized as he approached that Mikey had been yelling all this time.

"-Bam! Guys! Guns! Pew pew! Blood! Shooty McShooterson!" Mikey wailed, more incoherently than usual, "And Raph, he, I... we... _this_!" he threw the canister at Leo as if it burned.

Leo almost fumbled the catch, not having expected this, momentarily baffled by Mikey's apparent panic. He'd caught on to some of what Mikey was telling him, but he was still playing catch up. His first thought was the Kraang, because they were the ones who usually did most of the shooting. But Mikey's wild eyes said that something must have occurred that was stranger, if not in general, than at least to Mikey. Bizarre as they were, the Kraang were in the realm of normalcy as far as enemies of the turtles were concerned. They tangled with the Kraang often. Mikey's report indicated that this was something other than the typical enemy the turtles faced.

"Mikey, calm down," Donnie had followed Leo out of the Shellraiser and now grabbed Mikey by the shoulder while Leo struggled to catch the badly aimed canister, "Take a breath and tell us what happened. Come on, use your words."

"They shot Raph!" Mikey screamed, bursting into tears suddenly, which came as something of a shock to both of his brothers, "I thought he was right behind me! But they shot him! They shot him! In the head, Donnie!" here Mikey grabbed Donnie by both shoulders and shook him so hard the air was knocked out of him, "In the _head_!"

"Whoa, whoa, back up. Who did what?" Donnie gasped weakly, trying to find the air Mikey had shaken out of him.

Leo was quicker on the uptake.

"Get in the Shellraiser," Leo snarled, clutching the canister tightly enough to crack it, "_Now_."

Mikey all but flung himself into the Shellraiser, with a still confused Donnie following him. Donnie was brilliant, but it took him a bit longer to process unexpected input than the rest of them. Leo was generally the first to put things together in a way that made sense, which was a large part of why they followed his lead, aside from the fact that Splinter had made him their leader.

But, though he drove the Shellraiser like he'd gone mad all the way back to where Mikey had left Raph, Leo wasn't fast enough. By the time the turtles arrived, the scene was devoid of activity, only evidence of the conflict remained. A handful of spent shell casings rolled around on the ground in the faint wind. A splash of blood marred the side of the dumpster Mikey and Raph had hidden behind. A spray of red on the ground. Two shurikens embedded in the wall over a pool of blood. That's all there was left.

Raph was gone.

* * *

**_Author's Note: This story is completely written. I will be uploading one chapter per day. It is potentially slightly AU, but not on purpose. It's set early in season 2._****_ Though it is r_****_ated primarily for violence, this story_****_ also includes descriptions of animal neglect and abuse. Reader discretion is advised._**

_**I wrote this for my entertainment, and I am publishing it here for yours. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.**_


	2. Chapter 2

Mikey wasn't in good shape by the time they got him to the lair.

Guilt had settled in strongly, and he had now had time to absorb events which had happened too fast for him to get a handle on at first. Leo kept having to talk him down, but every few minutes he would come out with another outburst of "They shot him! They shot him, Leo! They shot Raph!"

Each time he said it, Leo got more angry about it. He wasn't really angry with Mikey. It was just that, each time Mikey said it, it drove like a nail into his heart. Raph being missing was one thing. Even Raph having been shot wasn't so bad. But knowing he'd been shot, and not being able to find him afterword, to see if he was okay or not... that was horrible. And it got worse every time Mikey started up again, unconsciously looking for answers which Leo could not give him.

"Mikey, shut up!" Leo finally exploded, banging his hand on the steering wheel of the Shellraiser, "Just shut up!"

"Leo!" Donnie scolded, sounding both shocked and appalled by the attitude Leo had taken.

"You shut up too!" Leo snarled over his shoulder, even though he was instantly sorry for causing the hurt look Donnie gave him, "I need to think. Just let me think!"

They had driven in helpless circles for almost an hour. Leo didn't know what he was looking for. Mikey hadn't seen any transportation, hadn't even gotten a good look at the attackers. Not knowing who they were, what they wanted or where they'd come from made it impossible to track them. They could have been standing in the street and Leo wouldn't have known the difference.

He eventually gave up, for the moment anyway. The drive back to the lair was silent. Leo refused to look in the mirror to see what his brothers were doing. If he had, he would have seen that they were fiercely avoiding looking at him or each other.

Leo's tone had scared them. Not just that he sounded angry enough to come back and punch them if they weren't quiet, but also that he sounded scared to death. Their fearless leader was scared, and they didn't know how to deal with that. If Raph had been there, he'd have shouted right back at Leo. They might even have argued. Anything would have been better than the silence.

"How are we gonna tell Splinter?" Donnie ventured hesitantly as Leo parked the Shellraiser.

"Don't worry about it," Leo said, more harshly than intended, "I'll deal with that. You just... just... go to your lab and... I don't know!" he banged the wheel, narrowly missing the horn, "I don't know! Just... just do something sciency for awhile, okay!?"

Donnie stared at him like he was a stranger, but said nothing. Slowly, he opened the door and hopped out of the Shellraiser, looking over his shoulder. Looking for a word of reassurance. He didn't get one.

"And take Mikey with you," Leo growled, gripping onto the steering wheel like he wanted to break it.

Donnie opened his mouth like he was going to argue that Mikey had no business in the lab, but he closed it again. It was unclear whether he was afraid of what Leo might do or say, or if he just saw the shimmering of denied tears in the reflection of Leo in the mirror.

"Come on, Mikey," Donnie said.

Mikey sat inert in the backseat. Donnie had to climb back in and push him out the door.

Only when they were gone did Leo take a shuddering breath, holding the wheel so tightly his fingers ached from it. He was afraid to let go, like it was the only solid thing in the world and it might disappear if he let go, even for a moment.

Raph was out there alone. He was hurt. He might even be dead.

Leo just wanted to scream. But he couldn't let himself do that. He had to regain some measure of control. He had to find his center, and be the leader his remaining brothers needed. He needed to think of someway to find Raph. He needed to gather his courage to face his father, and tell Splinter that one of his sons had not come home tonight... might never come home again.

His shoulders sagged and his head dropped forward to rest on the top of the wheel. He refused to cry. Refused. He wouldn't cry. Not until he knew. But he cried anyway, without realizing it. The pain was too great, and it felt as if he'd gone totally numb from it. He didn't notice the warm salty wetness escaping from his eyes. He didn't notice the droplets hitting the edge of the wheel, slipping silently to the floor. He didn't feel it. In the moment, he didn't feel anything.

* * *

"What are we gonna do, Donnie?" Mikey asked, sinking to the floor like a deflated balloon, wrapping his arms around his drawn up knees, "Are we gonna be okay?"

"We'll be fine," Donnie said, pinching the skin between his eyes to keep them from watering, "Leo will think of something. Leo will... or maybe I will..."

"Like what?" Mikey asked, sounding suspicious, sure Donnie was just trying to comfort him and didn't really have answers any more than Leo seemed to.

"I don't... just gimme a minute," Don didn't so much sit in the chair he'd staggered over to as fall into it and, having found that pinching his skin wasn't enough, he began to rub his eyes.

"That's what Leo said," Mikey reminded him harshly.

"I know, I know, Mikey. Just... wait a minute... sh! Shush! I got something," Don sat bolt upright, his muscles so taut he trembled, "I just... gimme a second."

Mikey bit his lip, seeing in Don's suddenly wide eyes that he _was_ thinking of something. Frustration began to carve deep lines in his expression. He was reaching for something and couldn't quite grasp it. Mikey stayed as quiet as he could, terrified that the slightest sound he made would break Don's concentration and make him lose the thought forever.

"I've got it!" Donnie pushed the wheeled chair around to the desk where he'd left his laptop.

Mikey cautiously got up from where he had sat on the floor. He came over to where Donnie was as quietly as he could, afraid if he made any noise he'd frighten whatever it was Donnie had got away. He didn't want to do that, but he did want to know what Donnie had got.

"Not all of the blood was Raph's," Donnie answered Mikey's unasked question, "In fact, most of it couldn't be. It was too far from where Raph was when he was hit, and there wasn't any blood between one spot and the other. That means Raph must have hit somebody, probably with a shuriken. That much blood... they'd have to find a doctor. Wounds like that would stand out in any hospital report."

"So?"

"So, most everything is done electronically these days. All I have to do is break into hospital computers and look at their recently filed medical reports. Someone with shuriken wounds is bound to stand out."

"_So_?" Mikey persisted.

"Oh, that's right. I'm talking to _you_," Donnie looked up from the screen momentarily.

"Hey!"

"What it means," Don said, ignoring Mikey's indignation, "is that we have a lead. We find the guy Raph hit, figure out who he is and who he works for. If we find that much, it shouldn't be too hard to track down Raph, wherever they've taken him."

It sounded easy. But everything Don said always sounded easy. It didn't make any sense to Mikey most of the time, but Donnie said it in a way that made it sound as if everything was easy.

The thing was, it usually wasn't easy.

"Leo wants sciency," Donnie huffed to himself, losing his consciousness into the stream of letters and numbers on his screen, "I'll give Leo sciency."

Mikey just cocked his head and looked on, feeling helpless, and useless. Just like he'd been in that alley, when Raph had needed him. But Raph had sounded so sure of himself, like he'd known exactly what he was doing. Mikey had just trusted that he did, and done as he was told. He'd done what he was told without thinking... and Raph had paid for it.

* * *

"Do not assume the worst when you have no proof," Master Splinter said when Leo finally found the courage to come and tell him what had happened, "Your brother is strong, resourceful. Circumstances may not be as bleak as you have made them out to be in your mind."

His voice said it, but his eyes were dark with grief. Leo knew it wasn't just for Raph, but for the memory of another child, another family, lost long ago. That was a kind of pain you didn't get over. Leo wanted to say that there were still three sons left. But, if he said that, it would only let Splinter know that Leo could see right through the lie. And that would be worse.

"Yes, Master Splinter," Leo said, nearly choking on the words, bowing his head to hide the truth, which was that he didn't believe a word his Master had just said to him.

"Michelangelo is certain it was not the Shredder?" Splinter inquired.

"He sounded pretty sure," Leo said, keeping his eyes on the floor to avoid seeing the pain that was in Splinter's face, "But you can ask him yourself."

Before Splinter could respond, Don let out a triumphant yell from the laboratory.

Startled, Splinter and Leo looked at each other, somehow avoiding meeting each other's eyes. They got up, Splinter leading the way towards the lab, where Don was shouting something about having found, to use his words 'the son of a bitch' (which was not Don's typical choice of vernacular, but nobody commented on that or even noticed).

"What's he found?" Leo asked of Mikey, who was standing in the doorway.

"The shuriken guy," Mikey replied, which was no help at all.

"Donnie?" Leo got no response and so snapped his fingers, "Hey, Don. Hey, hi, yes, over here. What did you find?"

"The shuriken guy!" Donnie replied, swinging his laptop on the desk so Leo could look at it.

"I wish you two would stop saying that," Leo said, coming over and leaning on the desk, peering at the screen, which displayed information which made absolutely zero sense to him, "Uh, D... you wanna maybe clue me in on what I'm looking at?"

"A hospital report," Don replied, irritation in his tone as he swung the laptop back towards himself, "I got to thinking that most of the blood at the scene really wasn't Raph's so-"

"Donnie, you're brilliant!" Leo interrupted as he caught on, slapping slapping his brother on the shell, "Where do we go?"

"How 'bout I tell you on the way?" Don suggested.

The turtles scrambled around, but were stopped by a firm tapping of Splinter's staff on the floor.

"Wait!" he ordered, "Just what do you intend to do when you get there?"

_Beat the stuffings out of him until he tells us where they took Raph,_ Leo thought, swallowing this reply before it left his mouth, knowing Splinter wouldn't appreciate that.

"You cannot merely go and question this man. He is in a hospital, you cannot sneak into one of those. Besides, a shuriken wound is no minor injury. He may be unable to answer any questions asked of him," Splinter was right, of course he was, but Leo didn't like it.

"So what? We just sit on our hands? How is that going to help Raph?" Leo demanded hotly, not even thinking that it was the kind of thing Raph himself would normally have said.

"There is an easier way, and all of you know what it is," he glanced at Mikey, "Most of you."

Leo and Don looked at each other. They knew, but they were angry. They didn't want to be sensible.

"His ID should be in the hospital records," Donnie said, sinking back into his chair, "I can trace him from there, find where he lives... and who employs him."

"So what about the rest of us?" Leo shifted from foot to foot irritably.

"We," Splinter said very slowly, "Shall wait. Here."

Leo grimaced at the thought, and he saw his own impatience reflected in Mikey. While Raph was easily the least patient of any of them, all were turtles of action, and waiting did not come naturally or easily.

"The T-phone!" Leo shouted suddenly, leaping up and grabbing Don by the back of his shell, "You can track Raph's T-phone, can't you!?"

"Why didn't I think of that?!" Don practically squeaked, "Let go of me and I'll do that."

"Sorry," Leo released Don's shell hastily and stepped back.

Splinter and Mikey exchanged glances, but they didn't have anything to add and so said nothing.

Don tapped the keyboard on his laptop first with enthusiasm, then with frustration, finally with a kind of dejection that let the others know whatever he was trying to do wasn't working.

"What? What's wrong now?" Leo asked worriedly.

"I... I don't understand. It's not destroyed. But... somehow... it's... someone turned off the tracker. I've been trying to reactivate it... but... I should be able to. I don't understand why I can't."

"Somebody besides Raph must have it," Leo said.

"_Obviously_. Raph wouldn't know how to block me from activating the tracker," Don threw this over his shoulder irritably, still trying to establish communication with the distant device, "He probably wouldn't even know how to turn it off in the first place."

He kept trying, but a few minutes later sat back with an infuriated sigh and shake of his head. He turned to Leo, his frustration suddenly evaporating, leaving nothing but a silent apology. His irritation seemed to have been the only thing holding him up and he sort of went limp in the chair.

"I'm sorry, Leo," Don said quietly, "There's nothing I can do."

Leo bit back the first thing that came to mind. It would be a cruel thing to say, so he didn't. Instead, he took a moment to compose his thoughts.

"Okay. Alright. Forget that. Go back to getting an ID on our shuriken guy."

"Huh?" Don blinked, his face empty of expression for a good three seconds, "Oh. Right. Him."

The defeat seemed to have taken a toll on Don. When he went back to work, it was with less enthusiasm than before. Like having lost one battle meant he would inevitably lose the next.

Leo stepped forward and put a hand on Don's shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

"We'll find him, Donnie," Leo said quietly, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt, "I promise."

"Yeah," Don replied, but sounded like he didn't really believe that, "Sure, Leo."


	3. Chapter 3

Raph didn't have a clear idea of where he was, why he was there, or even how he'd come to be there. He was on a slanted metal table, heavy leather straps around his wrists and ankles held him. He wasn't sure what the straps were attached to. The table, he supposed, but he couldn't see for sure because he was also held by straps around his upper arms and across his chest. Most infuriating of all, however, was the leather collar around his neck. It was either attached to the table or else something behind it that he couldn't see, and it prevented him from moving his head around much.

He wasn't sure if the worst thing about that was the mere fact that it was a collar, or if it was that the collar prevented him from looking away from the blinding fluorescent light overhead. It was so bright that it made spots appear behind his eyelids and made it impossible to see anything around him because anything around or behind the light was washed out by its brilliance.

Raph could only stare into it for so long before it made not only his eyes, but also something behind them, hurt. A throbbing in his temple was probably the result of the hit he'd taken there, but he figured the headache was at least partially the fault of that damnable light. He hated it.

He had the impression of being in a large room, if only because his breathing seemed to raggedly echo in his ears, along with the mind numbing thrum of an air circulation system of some kind. He couldn't see the walls, but he could hear murmuring voices beyond, whose words he couldn't make out. He also heard a rhythmic ticking noise, which he eventually identified as being the sound of shoes on tile or linoleum or something of that type covering concrete.

The bright light glared at him, housed in a metallic overhead lamp of some sort. It shone darkly behind the light, reflecting it and only making it worse. He hated it more by the second.

Raph didn't have a great sense of smell, which was part of why he could happily live in a sewer, but there were some things he was immediately able to discern. The air smelled stale, like it was recycled or something. Not a whiff of fresh air, just antiseptic, ammonia and some kind of fake lemon permeating everything. It was a sharp smell, and Raph felt a stinging on the roof of his mouth when he inhaled it, like the fragrance was scraping at it with a razor.

Raph knew he should be afraid. Deathly afraid. But his head was spinning, his thoughts were fragmented, and he couldn't seem to get a grip on the ghostly emotion of fear. It seemed vitally important that he be afraid, but he couldn't entirely understand why. He also wasn't sure why he couldn't seem to find anger. Just a seething hatred of that light.

That light and everything it represented.

He glared at the light as if trying to stare it down. It burned against his eyes and they watered, but he refused to blink. A fierce pounding started up in his head, his vision actually seemed to pulse, making the stationary light dance above him, growing brighter and dimmer in turn. It was disconcerting, but all he did was growl at it, or try to anyway. He couldn't actually summon a sound from his throat, which was utterly dry. A painful rattle was all he could manage, and it felt like he was trying to exhale sand.

He didn't blink until a warning buzz sounded in his head, the sort of buzz you hear when you're very close to passing out from stress. He closed his eyes, but the warning white noise in his head persisted and he felt himself going numb. With his eyes closed, it felt like he was spinning, and nausea welled up, forcing him to open his eyes again to assure his stomach that he was not moving in an attempt to settle it down.

Dimly, through the warning buzz, he heard a door opening. Someone came in. A face suddenly hovered between him and the light, but he couldn't make out any details except for the reflection of light off of a pair of wire frame glasses.

A cold hand in a latex glove placed itself on Raph's right arm and he flinched involuntarily, trying to worm his way out of the grip even though it was impossible. He tensed, and this seemed to annoy the hand, which tightened its grip. Maybe they were very strong or maybe the drugs hadn't worn off, but it felt like they were breaking his arm.

"Relax, we're just taking a sample of blood," said a voice that seemed not to belong to anyone, instead floating down from the ceiling in a disorienting manner.

It didn't make Raph feel any better. He wasn't keen on having his blood sampled, and couldn't imagine how that was meant to be comforting. He continued to writhe in the grip of the latex gloved hand.

"Either you relax or we knock you out again," came the disembodied voice, "Your choice."

Some choice. Raph forced the muscles in his arm to relax.

A needle plunged into his skin roughly, like the technician thought they were sticking a thermometer into a roast turkey to see if it was done. Raph didn't flinch. He felt that they'd done it on purpose, and he wasn't about to give them any satisfaction.

"See? Not so hard, is it?" the voice echoed through the room with annoying pleasure, like it was his owner and he was a dog who'd just learned to Sit after a particularly long period of noncooperation and idiocy on his part.

Raph felt a sudden bruising rush under the skin of his arm, the feeling of blood being rudely yanked out of the vein it belonged to. No one had ever drawn his blood before, and it was a shocking experience under the circumstances. But Raph had also found his anger in that moment. He tried to glare at the person in the room, but they weren't standing in the light anymore and so he couldn't see them. He grit his teeth, refusing to give any sign of discomfort.

"Take three since you're there," said the disembodied voice.

Why couldn't they be satisfied with one? Three seemed incredibly greedy.

Still staring up at the light, Raph had worked his way up from hatred to a sort of passionate loathing. He'd also worked up enough saliva to spit in someone's eye if they'd stood over him, but the person with the needle didn't give him the chance. It wouldn't have done him any good, but he was sure he'd feel better if he could just fight back that much.

He growled furiously, but the only response he got was another needle stuck in his arm.

Ah. There was the fear he'd been worried about.

* * *

The night was already half over before Don finally tracked down some of the information they were after. Getting a name hadn't been that hard, since it had been in the hospital records. But getting an address had proven more problematic, and the name of an employer completely impossible.

Leo had done his best not to hover, but it was hard. Always before there had been something to go on when one of them was separated from the others. Always they had some sort of trail to follow, somewhere they could go, somewhere they could look. But not this time. This time there was only one clue, and it wasn't a very promising one.

It had taken all of Leo's willpower not to lash out at Donnie, demanding to know what good an address was taken by itself. They knew where the man was, and he wasn't at home, or likely to be for some time. What they needed to know was who he worked for, or where he worked. But all they had was an apartment building and room number, information that -from the look in Donnie's eyes- had been rather hard won. There was also unspoken shame in Donnie's eyes. He didn't need Leo to tell him how nearly worthless that information scrap was. He knew. About that kind of thing, Donnie always knew.

But Leo wasn't going to ignore what little they had. He and his brothers would check out the apartment, ransack it if they had to, turn it upside down until they found something that made the effort worthwhile. Splinter did not deter them from this, but Leo could see in his Sensei's eyes that Splinter did not believe they would find anything in that apartment.

Though he would vehemently deny it, and would not tolerate any of the turtles suggesting it, it seemed as if Splinter had already begun to accept the possibility that the most aggressive of his son's had finally met the violent end for which he always seemed to be gunning. Only, for once, Raph hadn't gotten into trouble because of his temper.

As far as Leo could figure as of right now, Raph had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though Mikey had related events in as much detail as he could manage, Leo didn't know whether Raph had already been shot by the time Mikey became aware of the danger, or if he'd been shot while defending Mikey. In either case, by the time he'd instructed Mikey to run, blood had been spilled, and the evidence at the scene suggested Raph had made no attempt to follow Mikey.

Possibly he'd let his temper get the better of him, and had stayed to fight instead of trying to run. But Leo's gut told him that it was Raph's loyalty, not his anger, that had held him back. And loyalty was not something that Leo felt deserved punishment. This shouldn't have happened. Not like this.

The apartment building was quiet and dark when the turtles arrived. Jimmying a window open was a snap. Leo left Mikey on guard outside, while he and Don slipped silently into the apartment. They didn't speak, as he and Don had been over what sort of things they would be looking for. An address book would be nice, but anything which might give them a lead to another location, or another person who might know something would do.

It would have felt good to actually physically tear the place apart instead of only metaphorically do so. Leo wanted to destroy everything in here, from the sofa in the living room to the dishes in the sink. But he knew it wouldn't do any good, and would only potentially draw unwanted attention.

So instead he slipped through the dark, looking on surfaces and in drawers for any bits of paper with names or addresses, or electronics likely to have contacts or other information in them. He would settle for photographs or business cards. He was willing to track down every lead, however weak, right to the source, if only it would help him get his brother back.

All the other problems in the world seemed suddenly unimportant, in face of the overwhelming need to find Raphael. Raph had completed his mission in sending Mikey back with the mutagen canister they'd collected. On top of everything else, Leo owed it to Raph to find him and bring him home. This was family, his brother. He had sent Raph and Mikey out to complete a mission. He was their leader. He was responsible. And he would not rest easy until he brought his brother back home.

* * *

Once he had gained access to his normal range of emotions, Raph's outrage had quickly outstripped his fear. He was alarmed by the circumstances he found himself in, but mostly he resented the confinement, and was enraged by the liberties being taken with his person.

In addition to the examination he'd been forced to endure, he had also been stripped of everything except his pads and mask. It had taken some thorough searching to find every scrap of armament he carried, and he'd protested at every turn. His objections were all ignored, but that had never stopped him from objecting before. And, unlike Leo or Splinter, these people had no authority over him, and he had rejected all orders that weren't laced with the direct threat of being sedated again.

The skin on his neck was rubbed raw from the ill-fitting collar, and the numbness in his hands and feet was getting worse. He wasn't sure he had the strength to stand, even if he could have gotten free of his restraints, which he didn't seem to be able to.

"Wait. What are you doing? Stop that!" Raph snarled, but he was ignored as usual, "Oh good, good. I'm sure those drugs will replace all the blood you took outta me. I'm sure that's fine," he abruptly became very lightheaded, and maybe just a little bit high, "Woo, the ceiling's spinning! Why is the ceiling spinning, SHOULD-the-ceiling-be-spinning? I-don't-think-the-ceiling-should-be-spinning!... Oh, I don't feel so good," he felt like he ought to have blacked out, but he didn't.

Instead, it was more like his body and mind lost contact with each other. He could still think, but he couldn't feel anything or do anything. He wasn't even convinced he was still breathing, wasn't sure he could have felt the difference if he hadn't been.

The ceiling was still spinning wildly behind the light. Raph wanted to close his eyes, but seemed to have lost the ability to voluntarily do that. He also wanted to give voice to the fact that he was reasonably sure he was about to be sick, but he couldn't do that either.

People were in the room moving around. He could hear various noises, but there was also a high-pitched ringing in his ears, and he couldn't be sure what he was hearing. The straps came off, but he didn't know when that happened because he couldn't see them or feel anything in his extremities and only became aware of it when he was flipped over.

The sickness that had been welling up took that moment to actually go on the attack. He wondered if he'd drown in it, but somebody moved him so his head hung over the side of the table and he threw up on the floor instead of on the table.

People kept moving around and talking to each other, taking no notice of him as he continued to throw up. He might not be able to feel his arms or legs, but he could feel _that_. It felt like he was trying to retch up his own stomach lining, and it didn't feel good.

He threw up again twice more before he was turned over, picked up and sat on a different metal table, this one flat and with wheels. He was out from under the light at least. He couldn't see, his eyes had turned the place where the light had seared into them into a giant black spot, but the light was gone.

Then, mercifully, he lost consciousness entirely.


	4. Chapter 4

The apartment had for the moment led to another dead-end. Nothing the turtles had retrieved gave them another immediate location to go to. Donnie would have to sift through all of it, and see if any of it was relevant. Investigation of this sort wasn't in the turtles' usual purview. They had found a book of names and phone numbers, but that gave them a long list of suspects.

Donnie needed to find ways to narrow that list, otherwise they might spend the rest of their lives spinning their wheels breaking into houses and apartments of innocent people, looking for something that wasn't there. And, in the meantime, the troubles of New York hadn't simply vanished.

Regardless of what he wanted to do, Leo knew that he couldn't put the hunt for the mutagen canisters on hold forever. But he also now knew that someone was out there hunting them, someone he had been previously unaware of. Someone who had already taken down one of their most capable fighters. Chances were that threat hadn't simply evaporated. Whoever it was, they were probably merely waiting for another shot at the turtles. Somehow, not knowing who they were or what they wanted made them seem more terrifying to Leo than anything else. Already he had become more familiar with what they were capable of than he wanted to be, but not enough to anticipate what might happen should the turtles have another encounter with the same people.

But for now, there was nothing to do but wait. Again.

Mikey had managed to fall into a fitful sleep on the couch in front of the television, and Splinter was able to meditate, but all Leo could do was pace, which Donnie had told him to do somewhere outside the lab.

In the dark of the lair, Leo let the practical implications settle in for the first time. He couldn't operate on the high level of fear for his brother that he'd held throughout the night. Emotionally, he was drained, so his brain turned to the bare facts of what losing Raph would mean for them as a team.

Impatient and hot tempered, Raph was nonetheless the most reliable of Leo's brothers in a combat situation most of the time, despite his resistant attitude when it came to taking orders. If Leo needed a specific enemy put down, he could set Raph on them, and the red-masked turtle would do whatever it took to finish the job. Once committed, there was no one more single-mindedly devoted to a task than Raph, in or out of combat. Raph kept Mikey in line during a fight, which was why Leo paired them when they split into two groups. Truth be told, Raph also kept Mikey in line at other times, acting as anchor to reality for the most flighty of the brothers, keeping Mikey safe and reasonably under control. He was a powerful fighter, at times ruled by instinct, but his instincts were solid enough to trust a lot of those times, even if his approach was indelicate. All the brothers protected one another as needed, but for Raph it was like a calling, a task he was ready to perform at a moment's notice, meaning he often had the quickest reactions when trouble hit. Without him, the team was unbalanced. Without him, their physical toughness as a unit took a major hit. Without him... Leo didn't want to keep making that list.

And, Leo admitted himself, Raph had this way of bringing out the best in Leo himself. He was a better leader because of coping with Raph constantly fighting him, questioning him, arguing with him. Raph was the hardest to manage and, because of that (among so many other things), the most valuable asset Leo had as team leader. _He_ needed Raph's ferocious nature.

Though he didn't want to, Leo knew he had to face the question of what the team would do if they were unable to locate Raphael. He wasn't willing to give up on his brother, not now or ever, but as the team's leader, it was up to him to decide how they were to handle Raph's absence, whether it was temporary or prolonged. He had to make sure they continued to function as a unit. The more he thought about it, the more it felt as if he were missing a limb. Out there in a fight, when things got at their most desperate, the team functioned almost as a single being. They thought as one, felt as one, and acted as one. With one of their team missing, they were crippled.

* * *

A sudden lurching motion sent rivers of pain through Raph, snapping him out of his drug induced sleep with a yelp. He would have sat up, or tried to, but he found that he'd been confined. Apparently after he'd been knocked out, he'd been put into a crate for transport, a wooden thing with air-holes. Though he didn't know where he was, and didn't feel as if he could have fended off so much as one Foot bot, Raph still obeyed the impulse to thrash and try to break free. The crate proved to be highly restrictive of his movements, and he couldn't get any power behind his attempts to kick or punch the sides of the thing. He also rediscovered the pain of his injuries, the sick feeling in his stomach, and the leather collar around his neck towards which he redirected his frustration and anger. It did no good, the thing was too solid to tear off, and actually been locked into place to it couldn't be unbuckled.

After several minutes of useless struggle, Raph took a breath, calmed down, and tried to figure out where he was. He couldn't see out of the crate, but he nonetheless gathered almost immediately that he was in the back of a vehicle, a van probably.

Raph had other senses. They told him that this road was full of potholes. Each lurch of the vehicle seemed to rub his skin a little more raw and add another bruise to the collection he already had. He suspected that it wasn't as bad as it felt. The drugs had probably heightened and distorted his perception of these things. That was preferable to the alternative, which was that he was seriously hurt.

He didn't hear any other cars on the road. In the front, a heater was roaring, but the back felt cold as a freezer. Somewhere cold. Could he still be in New York? He hoped so.

The van wasn't just hitting every hole in the road. It was also being rocked, which was what was making him a queasy. Wind. It had to be wind. Very windy. Windy, and maybe high up, like on a bridge or overpass or something. Windy enough that the driver was fighting to stay in his lane.

Raph realized that maybe it wasn't that the road was deserted because nobody drove here, but that the weather was bad so nobody with any sense was driving _anywhere_. A storm had been moving in. Raph remembered that now, and tried to remember how windy it had been before he was caught. How long had he been unconscious? How far could they have taken him? He had no answers to those questions.

Though he listened hard, Raph heard nothing else outside, just the wind, the tires on the road, the rattling engine, the roaring heater that wasn't doing him any good, and a faint squeaking that happened every time the driver yanked on the steering wheel.

The really unsettling thing, Raph realized, was that he was awake at all. What was the point in knocking him out if he'd just wake up before they reached their destination? Then he figured it. They'd caught him, yes. They'd given the impression that they knew what they were doing. But really they were just winging it. They hadn't a clue how to deal with him, and were either making it up as they went along, or else were using (with possible modifications) methods that worked for some other sort of captive. The functional design of the crate suggested the latter. They were used to transporting _something_ big and dangerous. Something that liked to try and smash its way out.

Fear is a funny sort of thing. It can't maintain a constant level, but instead comes and goes in waves, rising and falling like a tide, often without real regard for the cause. Being more afraid has less to do with increasingly dangerous circumstances, and relief from the fear may not come just because the danger has passed. For the moment, Raph's fear was at an ebb.

He knew he should be afraid of people who didn't even know how to sedate him. The possibility of them killing him by accident was incredibly real. Maybe if he was Donnie, that fact might have had a greater impression on him. As it was, he felt oddly calm about it.

His enemy had a weakness, a gaping flaw which he could exploit. He didn't know how, not yet. He was restrained, and there was nothing haphazard or slipshod about that. Raph wasn't a great thinker like Donnie, or a planner like Leo. He didn't have Mikey's blind, foolish optimism.

What he did have was the teaching of Master Splinter.

In his mind, he heard Splinter, giving the same advice a hundred times over to him and his brothers. Sometimes what you had to do in order to accomplish something was to stop trying so hard to do it. Close your eyes, take a breath, maybe even meditate on it.

It went against Raph's every natural instinct, but he stopped trying to think or take in the sounds around him. That wasn't doing him any good. He forced himself to close his eyes, and to relax, one muscle at a time, breathing, focusing on nothing but making sure every bit of tension went out of him.

The thought that there had to be a way out kept trying to press itself back onto his consciousness.

Ruthlessly, he shoved the thought away. It didn't do him any good. Knowing there was a way out was not the same as knowing what that way out looked like. An endless thought loop wouldn't do him any good, and he had the impression that there was only so much time to think.

He tried not to think about seconds ticking away, tried to forget time as a concept.

It was, perhaps, easier for him than it would have been for a human. Time has little meaning for a turtle, who can be either diurnal or nocturnal according to his circumstances, and who may live for more than a hundred years without ever really changing from his youth. Turtles, in comparison with other animals, do not change much over time. To anyone on the outside, an old turtle looks just about the same as a young turtle, though many species will continue to get larger with age. Turtles are not built to hurry, nor do they.

Raph, being a mutant turtle, had more than a few human characteristics, and he had been raised to become an athlete, something any ordinary turtle has no hope of being, nor any intention of becoming. But, even so, he was still at least partially turtle. And, while he was impatient, forgetting the concept of time didn't come half so hard to him as it would to a human.

Seconds, minutes, hours, days, all were virtually the same when you didn't look too closely.

Thus he had no real way of knowing how long he'd been lying there when his eyes suddenly snapped open as though he'd forgotten he was in the dark so open or closed made no difference. He knew. He had the advantage. He knew what it was. And how to exploit it.

After the initial thrill of discovery subsided, he closed his eyes again, and prepared to wait. He was tired, and cold, and so falling into a sort of near-hibernation meditation wasn't difficult.

Raph could almost hear Master Splinter admonishing him during a training session,_"Wait. Watch. Opportunity will come. If you are not watching, it will come when you least expect it. Be patient."_

It was a lot easier to be patient if you just stopped thinking about what it was you were waiting for. The easiest way to settle in for the long haul was to convince yourself that what was happening had always been, there hadn't been a time before, and there wouldn't be a time after. That there was nothing you could do about the thing, because it had no beginning or ending, it simply was.

Perhaps there would be a lot less road rage in the world if more people practiced the art of seeing reality as a thing that happened to you as fast as it would, and resigned themselves to the fact that they would only be able to escape when life allowed them to do so, so they might as well sit back and get used to it. On the other hand, progress wouldn't come nearly as fast if everyone moved through life like a turtle, slowly and without attempting to inflict change on the world except by way of eating leaves and berries in sufficient amounts to fill an empty belly.

* * *

The night was gone. Above ground, the sun was well up in the sky. The storm that had been gathering the night before hadn't delivered on its promise of rain. The unfulfilled promise seemed to hang in the air like a warning or an accusation, even below ground. Down in the lair, the quiet of the last several hours was broken by a shattering sound from Donnie's lab.

Leo decided that this sound negated Donnie's earlier insistence on Leo's getting out of the lab and leaving him to his work, and he ran to investigate.

He found Don standing with his back to the door, bracing himself against a table with his hands. The shattering sound was accounted for by a glass beaker which had apparently been pitched across the room in an uncharacteristic fit of frustration. It lay on the floor, broken into countless pieces. Leo noted that Donnie wasn't so far gone as to have pitched any of the beakers with fluid in them.

Cautiously, Leo approached his brother, and realized Donnie was trembling.

"Don?" he spoke the name as a soft inquiry.

"I feel so useless," Donnie said quietly, continuing to hold onto the edge of the table as if he might fall if he let go, "Hours of work and I'm only a few pages through the notebook. All I've got the show for it are the addresses and business hours of two laundromats, four electronics stores, two barbers and a fancy Italian restaurant where you have to make reservations a week in advance. That and some numbers that have been disconnected."

He turned around abruptly, leaning against the table, and rubbing one of his eyes with the heel of his hand. Leo saw that his brother's eyes were red from so many hours staring intently at a computer screen, as well as a lack of sleep. Unlike the rest of them, Don had hardly paused for breath since Raph was taken. He hadn't taken a moment to absorb the shock, and it was catching up with him, as was exhaustion. He'd reached the end of his tether, and his brain was probably going in circles, spending as much time trying to remember where he was on a page as actually hunting down information.

When it came to technical problems, it wasn't unusual for Don to push himself beyond the limits of endurance. He'd been stretched pretty thin before this, just trying to deal with the mutagen crisis. The rest of them only had to deal with dangerous mutants, and retrieving any canisters they found safely. Don was putting in extra time inventing and maintaining equipment, and looking for a cure, and who knew what else.

"I'm sorry, Leo," Donnie was continuing, "I know I should have something by now, but I just don't."

"Shut up, Donnie," Leo said in a voice much gentler than he'd been able to muster last night, "It's not your fault this happened. You did _not_ do this. You've done all you can, more than any of the rest of us could have. Just because it didn't pan out doesn't mean you didn't do your best."

"But, Leo, I-"

"Donnie," Leo paused, waiting for Don to look him in the eye, "You can't control everything. You've done everything you can for now. You're completely exhausted, and that means you'll start making mistakes. So, for now the best thing you can do is go to bed. Which is exactly where you're going."

"I am not! I'm going to- Leo, let me go! Stop it! Put me down!"

"Come on," Leo had hauled his brother over his shoulder, "You need sleep."

"Put me down!" Don insisted.

"Not unless you're going to walk to your bed on your own."

"Fine. Just put me down!"

Leo set Donnie down, then turned him around.

"Your bed is that way. Go."


	5. Chapter 5

A good way to be patient was to sleep. Time seems to pass much more swiftly when one is unconscious. The downside is that sometimes our worst fears come to life in dreams. And there is truly no escape from nightmares. Leo had gone to bed shortly after he'd sent Donnie, not because he was sleepy, but because there was nothing else for him to do. He hadn't expected to fall asleep, but had done so almost as soon as he'd lain down. Now he was having one of the worst kinds of nightmare.

Not the kind where he was being chased by a monstrous something. Not the kind where he had somehow failed everyone and they were either dead or deeply disappointed in him (or both). It wasn't even the kind where he was on the verge of dying somehow and woke up just before death. It was nothing like that, but a different kind, a kind he'd never had before.

It was a dream where everything was normal. To clarify, nothing was wrong. Nothing was amiss, odd, or otherwise upsetting. And that was the most horrifying part of it.

Some part of him knew what he was seeing wasn't right, but it wasn't strong enough to reject the dream out of hand or recognize it for what it was. Instead, it felt like what he knew was wrong, that this was the reality and he just hadn't known it until now. Only he couldn't quite remember what it was that reality was supposed to look like according to him, so he couldn't tell what had changed.

In the dream, he was an ordinary turtle, in a tank with three other ordinary turtles. Yet they had names, he knew them as his brothers, and they talked. And Splinter was still a mutant rat, only he was living in a house that looked like the lair except for having windows to the outside.

It was daytime in the dream, birds were flying by the window and singing. Splinter was reading a book in front of a roaring fireplace, the flames made his long whiskers glint strangely. But that didn't seem so wrong. Trapped in the dream, Leo couldn't remember not being a normal turtle.

He couldn't remember a time when Mikey hadn't spent his days half submerged in the water portion of the tank. Donnie was happily sitting on a rock in the middle of the artificial pond, his head lifted to catch the warmth of a heat lamp overhead. Raph was in a corner by himself, sleeping.

Leo looked around frantically, trying to figure out what was wrong with the picture. It wasn't that this wasn't a happy place, or a good place. It was that there was something wrong with it, only he couldn't seem to find what it was and nobody else seemed to have noticed.

Splinter got up after a time and came over to the tank the turtles were in. He opened the lid, and reached in. Leo wasn't sure why, but it scared him and so he pulled into his shell. Peering out, he saw that Splinter had set down an orange ceramic dish with lettuce in it.

Mikey splashed about in the water, then came meandering up, bits of dirt clinging to his feet and underside as he marched over to the dish and snapped a leaf out of it. The leaf turned into a pizza slice, but Leo in the dream was convinced that it had always been a piece of pizza, even though something in the back of his mind ferociously insisted that it had been a leaf a moment ago.

A purple bowl was set down next, causing Donnie to skitter off the rock and paddle across the pond in what for an ordinary turtle was a tearing hurry. He was saying something about quadratic and aquatic equations, but Leo didn't understand what he meant.

A third bowl, this one blue, was set down, and Leo knew it was for him. Against his will, he found himself uncurling from his shell and coming over to it, eating out of it even as he knew there was something horrible about it, something completely wrong and awful.

After a few minutes, he noticed that Raph hadn't moved, nor had a bowl been set down for him.

"What about you? Aren't you hungry?" he asked Raph, who opened one eye to look at him.

The bright green eye, disconcertingly human in the fully turtle face, glinted with amusement.

"Oh, didn't anyone tell you?" Raph asked, "I'm dead. Don't you know? The dead don't eat pizza."

"Of course they don't, that would be silly," Donnie replied mildly, "They eat pie squared."

Leo woke up screaming.

* * *

Raph didn't remember going to sleep, but he jerked awake, a scream ringing in his ears. It hadn't been him, and it didn't seem to be anywhere in reality. He knew from the moment he heard it that the voice belonged to Leo, that Leo was terrified. That's what snapped him awake so abruptly.

But Leo wasn't in the van with him. The only change from earlier was that the vehicle had stopped.

Fear rippled through Raph, but it was like it didn't belong to him. It was as if it was someone else's, and he couldn't understand it. It shook its way through him, then was gone like the ghostly cry which had come before. It was one of those eery, inexplicable events that everyone experiences, something which makes no sense, which has never happened before and probably won't again, and seems to have no purpose other than to make you question reality as you understand it.

Whatever it was, real or imagined, it shot through Raph like an injection of adrenaline. He was hit by the overpowering desire, or need, to find Leo. Any hesitation he might have had was eliminated by a singular, powerful drive. Raph might have considered his physical weakness and decided not to try, or that maybe he should wait for a better opportunity to present itself. But the sound and feel of Leo's fear was stronger than anything, wiping all other thoughts out of mind.

When the back of the van opened, Raph stayed still and quiet in his crate. Hopefully, they thought he was still unconscious, and therefore quite harmless. If they did, it was possible that they would make a mistake, give him an opening. Raph was willing to take even the slightest opportunity to escape. They were talking to each other, but Raph wasn't listening to them, his heart beat was thundering in his ears, blocking out any other sound. He didn't care about what they were saying, only what they were doing.

He heard sounds outside the crate which seemed to indicate that it had been secured to the floor of the van and that was now being undone. Shortly thereafter, he heard and felt the crate being slid out of the van, and then carried some distance. Cold air came in through the holes in the side, and flickers of natural light as well. Now when the wind blew, he could feel it whip through the crate.

Then the crate was set down. Metal rattled, and the crate shifted as if it were being given a shove. And then the end above Raph's head was opened. Raph squinted in the sudden brightness, a split second of uncertainty making him freeze where he was. Not being able to see what was out there gave him pause. But, if he was going to take them by surprise, now was best, before he got strapped down to another table or something.

He'd already quietly gathered his limbs under him, bracing against the sides in preparation for lunging forward or upward, depending on which way the crate opened. Now he launched with every bit of power at his disposal, flinging himself out into the brightness, ignoring the pain that tore through his head and leg at the unwonted strain. Seeing a patch of darkness, Raph dove for it as his eyes began to adjust, recognizing the shadows for what they were.

Blinking, he swung his head to take in his surroundings for the first time, and was annoyed with the way the collar chafed at his neck. He had bigger problems than the collar, however.

Raph had been released into a large pen. Its walls were of heavy wire mesh that went up about twelve feet, and terminated in a slanted roof of the same. The base of the walls had been set in concrete. There were multiple solid gates, all of them sturdily hinged and latched, and locked shut. The locks were inaccessible from the inside. Raph had bolted for shadows created by some sort of wooden platform thing in the middle of the enclosure. There had been a small panel slid out of place which was just the size of the crate's opening, but that had snapped shut when Raph exited.

Several men stood near the crate, staring at him. Angry, feeling tricked, cheated of even getting to make an escape attempt, Raph darted back towards them and threw himself at the fence. He bounced off it ineffectually, but it made a satisfying rattle, and the men had flinched back. Then he turned away, prowling the fence line, looking for a weakness, ignoring them.

He had nothing to say to these people, and no interest in what features the enclosure had within it. He just wanted _out_. He still had that unaccountable feeling that Leo needed him, and it urged him to action, even though he was weary and pained. His nature had always been that of a wild thing, and he resented being put in a pen like a dog, almost as much as he resented the collar around his neck.

Raph didn't know what else was happening, or why he'd been brought here, but he did understand the nature of the confinement, and the unwanted ornament around his neck. They represented subjugation. More than that, of ownership. He was being treated as property, and he didn't like it. Raph didn't belong to anyone. Not like this. This was unacceptable, and he was going to fight it.

After making one complete circuit of the pen, whose walls were curved oddly rather than cornered, and which was at once larger and smaller than his initial impression had indicated, Raph stopped and stood where the crate had been. The panel which had slid aside was the lower part of one of the gates.

The men had already taken the crate away, loaded it onto the van and left Raph alone. Only he wasn't alone. There were other pens ranged across the property, and he could see that many of them were inhabited. Some housed mutants, others merely contained exotic wildlife of one kind or another. All were too far away, or concealed by features of their enclosures for him to make out clearly.

Across an open expanse of what had probably been a lawn but was now just mud was a sprawling house, painted white and with large windows. It was far enough away that he couldn't make anything of the interior. He rapidly lost interest, and paced in a new direction. More pens greeted him on all other sides. In the distance, he thought he could make out a forest. Aside from the house and pens, there was no sign of civilization except for a long gravel drive leading off through the trees.

City born and raised, Raph was unsettled by the sense of isolation, of wilderness all around. The lack of vehicular traffic sounds, the hiss and rattle of discarded papers and plastic wrap blowing across sidewalks of concrete and streets of asphalt made him uneasy. No alleys, no rooftops, no manholes, no sewers. Nowhere was there anything he recognized as home. It was like being transported to another planet. He hated everything about it at once.

Turning towards the interior of his pen for the first time, he realized he wasn't alone after all. Up on top of the wooden structure behind which Raph had at first sought to hide was a big creature of mottled gray and black whose nature he could not at first discern. After a little, he realized he was looking at some sort of mutant lizard, much larger and heavier than himself.

He wasn't sure how intelligent it was. Some mutants, like himself, gained human traits, including intelligence and powers of speech. Others did not. Humans often took on animal characteristics, sometimes (but not always) losing their human nature in the process. Some mutants were stupid but harmless. Some were cunning and vicious. A first glance didn't tell Raph which this one was.

The lizard lay on its belly in a patch of wan sunlight, its eyes unblinking as it stared fixedly at its new room mate. It slowly extended a forked tongue, flicked it, and withdrew it. After that, it resumed sitting perfectly still. Raph decided to leave it alone for the moment.

Hiding under the platform, cowering in apparent fright, was a dog. Actually... Raph cocked his head thoughtfully, feeling the feral gaze on him in a way no human ever truly could. The long legs and large feet might have been telling to someone else, but for Raph it was the sense of wildness -not just fear but actual wildness- that he got from the animal. Assuredly it had seen nothing like him before, and he had lunged out with the clear intention of doing violence. Accordingly, the animal felt threatened. It was a wolfdog; like a mutant, but not a mutant, it was part one thing and part another.

There was a smaller creature, golden with black spots, which slunk around the walls of the pen, having darted aside when Raph passed by it, hissing at him indignantly (though he hadn't noticed). It was clearly a mutant, but Raph thought it might have been some sort of cat. He wasn't sure though. It could have been almost anything. It was long-bodied, larger than a cat, and had a sharp little face and rounded ears. Given its size, Raph was kind of surprised neither the wolfdog nor the lizard had eaten it. But then he remembered the squirrelanoids. Those had started out small. But they were terrifying and highly dangerous. He decided to leave the little creature alone too.

The ground of the enclosure consisted primarily of thick mud. Even though the area didn't look to have recently suffered flooding, the enclosure didn't have a proper drainage system, and so held whatever water came into it in the form of dark, thick mud. When Raph had been in constant motion, it hadn't bothered him much, but standing still caused him to sink into it, making moving again somewhat difficult. The mud was more than difficult to move in, it was also incredibly cold.

Raph had no interest in staying in it, but the only way out seemed to be up on the wooden structure in the middle of the enclosure, which he was beginning to see had been designed as some kind of jungle gym type thing. He didn't want to play in it, but Raph could see that it would be the warmest place, as it would take him completely out of the mud. There were multiple platform levels, and those would provide some shelter from the wind. The second best spot was under it, which was well sheltered from the wind, but left him still in the mud.

The big lizard on the platform, and two animals on the ground suddenly took on a new significance. There was a pecking order in this pen, and the lizard was at the top. Not only was it at the top, but either it didn't want the other animals anywhere near it, or they were too scared to approach. The three animals and Raph could all have fit on the platforms, but they would have to be in close proximity.

Seeing Raph taking special interest in it, the mottled black lizard lifted its head, arched its long neck aggressively, and issued a hiss that was all menace. Clearly, it had no intention of sharing its perch.


	6. Chapter 6

When Leo woke up screaming, he attracted the attention of Splinter, as well as waking both of his brothers. When he continued to scream, Splinter came and saw that he appeared unharmed, but unaware of his immediate surroundings. Shaking him by the shoulders, Splinter endeavored to gain Leo's attention, which was fixed on some point beyond the wall of his room.

Leo grabbed Splinter's wrists as though he wasn't clear on whether he should hold onto his Sensei or fend him off. A few seconds later, his scream cut off and he made a choking, gasping noise that seemed to have nothing to do with anything real, but everything to do with whatever he was staring at.

"Leo!" Mikey cried as he and Don stumbled into the room.

"Quiet. Both of you," Splinter hissed, then returned his attention to Leo, "Leonardo, my son. Hear me. Whatever you have seen, it is unreal. You must let it go."

For several seconds, Leo seemed not to have heard him, and continued to gasp like he was being choked. But, little by little, his eyes began to clear. His brain began to work out which things he'd dreamed, which things were real and to put the things he couldn't figure out in a bin by themselves.

He went silent and began to tremble, continuing to hold onto Splinter, though with less desperation than before, like he no longer _needed_ to hold onto something prove to himself it was real.

He blinked twice, and his eyes came into focus. He looked up sharply at Mikey and Don, and they both expected him to yell at them to get out, but then his gaze softened and fell from them to the floor.

"I saw Raph," Leo said quietly, sounding half ashamed, "I saw him. I mean... I didn't really see him, but... he was there. He was there, and... something... something was around his neck."

Leo freed his right hand from Splinter and touched his own neck thoughtfully, wincing as though he was in pain despite the fact that no wound could be seen there.

"It was a dream, my son," Splinter told him, "It is over now."

"Yeah... yeah, I guess," Leo rubbed his forehead, feeling a migraine coming on.

Don felt a shiver ripple through him, hearing the uncertainty in Leo's voice, like he didn't truly believe what Splinter had told him. Mikey didn't appear to have noticed. Splinter, on the other hand, seemed to be fully aware of the uncertainty, but chose to ignore it.

"You will be fine," Splinter told Leo, "Take time to regain your composure. We will be outside."

He got up and strode from the room, the sheer power of his movement enough to drag Mikey and Don with him. But Don couldn't shake the feeling that Splinter thought it wasn't all dreams. Don didn't like the feeling and tried to shake it off, but when Splinter went to his room and shut the door without a word, a cold feeling crept into Don's heart.

Unconsciously, he touched a hand to his throat. Unconsciously, he wondered.

* * *

There was no denying that Raph was tough, but he had spent the majority of his life up to this point in the shelter of the sewers. One thing Splinter could not have prepared him for was the elements. The longer Raph was out in the cold, the more aware he was of how dangerous it was to him.

He'd spent brief moments in the cold before, but never for very long, and always while involved in some kind of heavy physical exertion. Not being fully turtle, this was sufficient to keep Raph warmed up as long as had been needed at the time. This time was different.

When Raph moved around the wooden platform in the middle of the enclosure, the mutant lizard on top of it hissed, turning its head to watch him out of fierce eyes. He still didn't know if it could talk or not, but he could tell it didn't feel particularly friendly towards him.

The thick, cold mud made it difficult to move, though Raph could tell it was much harder for the wolfdog and little furry gold and black spotted mutant than it was for him. He was a turtle, and mud (even thick mud) was somewhat natural to him. It slipped off his skin more easily than it would off another type of animal, and his overall shape helped him to break loose of the vacuum that caused other creatures to get stuck with a minimum of effort. But it was still bitingly cold, and was more work to maneuver through than no mud or pure water would have been.

The wolfdog, under the platform, had turned its entire body to watch him. The mud wasn't as deep under the platform, apparently because the wolfdog had dug it out until the ground was firmer. Even so, the wolfdog's paws were half submerged and it moved stiffly, though that might have been wariness.

Once he had the structure between himself and the blowing wind, Raph took a moment to assess things. As both ninja and turtle, Raphael knew how to slow his systems, and to essentially fall into a hibernation state. That would allow him to survive the elements much better. But it would also render him largely unaware of what was going on around him. This was no time or place to be unconscious. Too many unknowns, too many potential threats.

Uneasily, he noticed that the wolfdog was more than just muddy and skittish, it was also quite thin. He didn't know if wolves ate turtles normally, but he was pretty sure a starving dog would eat almost anything, even though he'd never had one. If he stopped looking dangerous, the wolfdog would likely decide to test whether or not he could be eaten. That was a situation to avoid.

The ideal, in terms of warmth, would be for the four captives to all climb up and huddle on one of the lower platforms of the wooden structure where they would be sheltered from the wind by the upper portions of it, and isolated from the mud below. At least, that's what it seemed like.

Raph didn't really know. This was a situation for which he'd had no training whatsoever. Splinter had taught him and his brothers to survive and cope with a variety of dangers. But they'd spent their lives in a sewer under New York. They didn't come across a lot of wide open spaces full of icy mud. And neither Raph nor any of his brothers remembered a time when they had been destined to be pets living in a terrarium. Confinement was foreign and abhorrent to them. To be restrained was to be in danger. It meant that an enemy had hold of you, or could get to you without your being able to stop them. To be above ground during the day was almost as dangerous.

Long habit urged Raph to find a way underground. But there were no sewer tunnels here.

Cautiously, Raph began to sidle up to the structure. The wolfdog and lizard stared at him, and the former began to back away uneasily. However, the latter didn't move at all aside from lifting its head higher. Not until Raph actually put a hand against the wooden structure. Then all hell broke loose.

The lizard launched itself with a shrieking sound. Raph had barely enough time to duck. As the lizard leaped over him and started towards the ground, it suddenly thrashed, whipping its head around and snapping at him. It should have missed, would have, except that its jaws caught the back of the collar around Raph's neck. When gravity pulled the lizard to earth, it yanked Raph over backwards with it.

As he went over, Raph managed to protect his injured leg, but he still got the wind knocked out of him when he hit the mud. Stars exploded in his vision, courtesy of the head injury and possibly whatever drugs were left in his system. For the first time he could recall, Raph really didn't feel up to a fight.

But he'd walked into a fight nonetheless. The lizard had landed on its feet, and for a moment it was hauling Raph backward through the mud by the collar, choking him. Then Raph twisted, folding himself almost in half so he could try to give the lizard a good kick in the head. Maintaining its hold on the collar, the lizard actually reared onto its hind legs and tail, and brought the powerful forelegs forward either to try and grip Raph or else claw him. He didn't care which. Getting his legs under him, Raph pushed off the ground, trying to take away the lizard's point of leverage. He wasn't tall enough, but he did succeed in knocking them both over into a particularly deep patch of mud.

For the next thirty seconds -a seeming eternity- it was almost pure chaos. It was just thrashing in the mud, trying to fend off the clawed limbs that were coming at him, twist free of the suffocating grip on his collar, and avoid getting stuck or drowned in the mud. Raph and the lizard rolled, flailing at each other, trying to block attacks as well as make their own. A couple of moderate hits were scored, but the only damage was some superficial scratches on Raph, and insignificant bruising to the lizard.

Then the lizard got its feet under it. With a powerful wrench of its neck, the animal yanked Raph down and to the side, and let go of the collar so that it was able to plant its full weight across his plastron. For the first time since the lizard had pulled him down, Raph could breathe, however shallowly.

His head was spinning, his vision dark, and every part of his body protested violently against everything that had gone down thus far. But Raph could breathe again. It was all he needed to gather enough strength to pull his legs up and give the lizard a kick in the midsection that sent it flying across the enclosure with a shrieking hiss.

Snarling, Raph rolled over and started to push himself up. The lizard was already back, and smacked him in the side, sending them both back down into the mud. But this time Raph was ready. This time he didn't have to be careful how he used what precious little oxygen was available.

Unlike Raph, the lizard hadn't begun the fight injured. But it was colder than Raph by virtue of having been outdoors longer, and Raph had felt when he first hit the thing that it was pitifully thin. And of course no one had trained the lizard in the art of Ninjutsu.

However, when it saw that it was losing the contest of physical strength, the lizard decided to open its mouth again. This time it bit Raph on the upper arm. Hard. The pain was something Raph could have ignored, but the fact that the lizard latched on and didn't let go threw him into something of a fit. It was too much like being strapped down on the table again. When he wasn't able to immediately pull free and a sound whack on the head didn't make the lizard let go, Raph nearly panicked.

He threw himself around, kicking at the lizard and punching it with his free hand. It just became a dead weight, and clamped ever more firmly onto his arm. It had sharp teeth, which dug in and drew blood, and its strength was enormous. It couldn't win with finesse, and so was going with brute force.

Though he tried, Raph couldn't pry the lizard's mouth open, or find any way to make it let go. It had committed to this last stand, and it wasn't letting go for anything. He could feel it had more strength it could put into the bite, and realized that if he didn't want it to do some serious damage to him, he had no choice but to let it win. For the moment.

Raph forced himself to go limp, and waited for the lizard to accept this as his surrender. The moment he quit struggling, the lizard stopped increasing the pressure on his arm. It didn't seem to have any interest in destroying him, it was merely making a point. But it was almost a minute before the lizard finally let him go, and slowly waddled its way back to the platform, laboriously climbing up the ramp to the lowest platform. But Raph wasn't fooled. When necessary, the lizard was quite agile enough to participate in a fight and to win against someone who ought to have been faster and stronger.

But Raph hadn't been up for a fight to start with. Badly hurt, half sick, he'd been in no shape to hold his own against much of anything. And the lizard's attack had spoken of a kind of mad desperation which Raph did not feel with regards to the platform. He wondered what the reason for that was, or if there was a real reason. With mutants, it could be hard to tell.

One eye on the lizard, Raph lay on his back for awhile, catching his breath and also making sure he didn't provoke the lizard to attack him again. He had no wish to go another round with it. Not right now. He needed rest. He needed a way to get warm. He needed... a lot of things. But what he really wanted, above all the rest of it, was to go home. That was all. He just wanted to go home.

* * *

If not for the precise feeling of leather scraping against the skin of his neck, Leo might have shaken it all off as a dream. But the sensation was so real, he found himself unable to entirely discount it. He found himself trying to reach out with his mind and find Raph through meditation, but it didn't work. He got thoughts and images, but they weren't real, only his imagination. He could feel the difference.

The only thing he managed to grasp was something he knew without having to meditate. A single word, which held within it all of the purpose and longing which could be felt in a heart without bursting it.

_Home_.

Leo suspected, however, that it was merely his own wish that Raph was back home, or at least on his way. Probably Raph wanted to go home, but there was no reason to think that the intense longing Leo felt belonged to anyone else. He wanted Raph to come home more than anything.

He decided to go see if Donnie had made any progress.


	7. Chapter 7

After the fight with the lizard, Raph wasn't keen on trying to tackle the wolfdog. If it was as unfriendly as the lizard, he'd be in for another battle, and he just wasn't capable of summoning the energy for that.

Though he was a long way from giving up, he was too tired now to keep looking for a way out. His first inspection, and a more lethargic one conducted after the fight with the lizard, had revealed no obvious weaknesses in the fencing which he could exploit. He had decided to rest for awhile to give the drugs the opportunity to work the rest of the way out of his system, and then try again.

But the driest and warmest places were taken. So Raph caved to instinct where knowledge failed him. He didn't know how to survive in the open. Even if he had been a wild animal, he would have sought shelter when the elements were too extreme. But there wasn't any adequate shelter here. Because the lizard wouldn't let him, he couldn't even get to shelter that was _inadequate_.

And so, he tried to make his own. Instinct bade him dig in the mud, seeking warmth beneath its surface. Normal turtles would submerge themselves in mud or water to hibernate through the cold of winter. Just a few feet down, even in the dead of winter, the ground could be surprisingly warm. In fact, that constant temperature was what drew burrowing animals in during either cold or hot seasons.

Raph had never been formally taught this, though it had undoubtedly gone past him before. But he had been taught to be resourceful, and to listen to his instincts. Those instincts were right, but he didn't have the strength to get deep enough, and the mud wasn't thick enough to stay out of the hole he was trying to dig. Eventually, tired and discouraged, he simply gave up and lay in the mud, his extremities partially pulled into his shell. In a pinch, he was able to withdraw almost completely into his shell. But it wasn't terribly easy for him because of his mutation, nor was it comfortable, and he couldn't stay fully withdrawn for long periods.

He was out of the wind, and curling up helped him conserve what body heat he had. But he wasn't generating heat of his own to speak of, and he was very weak. Those two factors made the cold much more dangerous than it would otherwise have been. But what else could he do?

The lizard appeared to have gone back to sleep. But the wolfdog was still watching him, standing with its head lowered and ears forward. It seemed unsure what to make of him. Having seen him fight the lizard, it now had some idea what he was capable of. But it also looked hungry, and Raph was not sure it had been convinced that he wasn't for eating, so he kept both eyes on it.

After a little, Raph noticed without particular surprise that the wolfdog also wore a collar. A purposeful glance at the lizard said it also wore a collar. The little gold animal had slipped around to the other side of the enclosure to avoid being near Raph, so he couldn't see it. But he suspected it also had a collar. He wondered if his cell mates hated their collars as much as he hated his.

* * *

The news from Donnie wasn't promising. Any of the names and addresses he'd tracked down might be someone who knew something about Raph and what had happened to him, but just as likely they had no idea. Though it would have felt good, Leo knew that they couldn't just go smashing down doors until they found one with answers behind it. Without something that implicated them, these people had to be regarded as innocent simply because otherwise the turtles would become the next local news story, something they wished to avoid for a variety of reasons.

Practically speaking, they couldn't do much but spy on these people and look for anything suspicious. Unless and until Donnie got something more promising for them to go on, the only thing for it was to spend the time watching without being seen.

For that kind of work, it was a long list of names. It had taken Donnie hours to get them a list to work with, because for the most part it was just phone numbers, and Don had to find the names and addresses that matched, and throw away the ones who were too far away to be bothered with.

It might be a vain hope that Raph was still in New York, or even that anybody in New York knew anything about where he'd been taken, but it was the only hope the turtles had.

"Keep working on that phone-book," Leo told Donnie, "Mikey and I will go check out some of the addresses."

"Be careful," Don said, briefly looking up from his work to lock eyes with his brother.

Leo was about to dismiss this with a light remark, but he saw the genuine worry in his brother's eyes. He didn't have to remind himself that there were people out there looking to capture, hurt or kill the turtles. But there was a new, unknown threat out there. And it had taken one of their number already. Donnie had good reason to look worried.

"We will," Leo promised, "And you'll let us know if you find something interesting?"

Donnie nodded wordlessly, and Leo went off to find Mikey. Mikey had mostly kept to himself since Raph was caught, especially when the initial apartment search had proven to be a probable bust. Of course, there wasn't a lot for Mikey to do. Don was doing the tech stuff on the computer, Leo was trying to figure out a plan for where to go from here, and Mikey... Leo hadn't paid any attention.

As he stepped into Mikey's room, which was as usual a total wreck, Leo stepped on something that made a crackling noise. He looked down, and saw Mikey's Game Boy. It had been smashed to pieces and left on the floor. Leo looked up from it at Mikey's bed, expecting Mikey to be in it.

But he wasn't.

Leo had looked around the room a couple of times before he saw Mikey sitting in the far corner, facing the wall, utterly motionless. With a pang of guilt, Leo realized he should've paid attention sooner.

"Mikey?" Leo inquired, stepping into the room, "Whatcha doin'?"

Mikey didn't answer, nor did he acknowledge Leo in any way whatsoever.

"Mikey?" Leo stepped closer, then gasped, rushing to his brother's side and kneeling down, "Oh, Mikey, what did you do?"

He grabbed one of Mikey's hands, which was bloodied at the knuckles. Blood stained the wall above Mikey's head, where he had evidently been punching it with both fists until they bled.

"Mikey, what were you thinking?" Leo demanded, but Mikey just looked up at him in a sort of vacant way, like he was only vaguely aware that he was being spoken to.

Leo sighed, "Alright, get up. Come on. We need to clean these cuts."

Guilt flashed through him. This was exactly the kind of thing he should have been looking out for. If only he'd gotten on the ball a little faster, given his brother something else to do and think about.

He'd stood Mikey up and propelled him almost out the door before his brother suddenly thrashed free, whirled around and kicked the wreckage of the destroyed Game Boy.

"Why him!?" Mikey yelled, pushing Leo back roughly, almost knocking him down, "Why Raph!? Why Raph, Leo!? Why not me? It shoulda been me, man! It shoulda been me! Not him! Why him!?"

"Mikey, calm down," Leo tried to take his brother in hand, but Mikey pushed him, and then struck out at him, clipping him in the chin with a bloodied fist.

Leo winced, but refused to be driven off.

"Mikey, settle down," Leo insisted, trying to hold the hands that were flying at him, striking mostly useless, glancing blows against his chest, "Mikey, stop it!"

"It should have been me!" Mikey screamed as Leo finally got him by both wrists, crossing them in front of him to prevent further assault, "I was there too! Why wasn't it me!? Answer me, Leo!"

"Stop it!" Leo yelled and, just for a moment, his voice was as ferocious as Raph's when he was angry, "Just stop it, okay? Think about it. Whatever guilt you've got, Raph would feel a hundred times worse! You know him. You know how he'd feel if anything happened to you! To any of us! You want to wish that kind of pain on your brother? You selfish idiot!"

Mikey had fallen silent, staring widely into Leo's eyes. Seeing the tears shimmering there, Leo's voice softened, even though he continued to hold onto Mikey, preventing him from twisting free.

"Raph knew exactly what he was doing. He made the choice, Mikey. There is nothing you could have done differently, except maybe get yourself caught too. You couldn't have helped him. _You could not_ have made him leave. Raph did this for you, and you have no right to destroy yourself because of it. It's not fair to you. It's not fair to us. But it's especially not fair to him."

Leo began to tremble, so he let go of Mikey in order to keep a grip on his voice. Mikey slid to the floor like the bones had just been taken out of him. He sat at Leo's feet, staring up at him.

"Raph's first thought was for us, his brothers. And for New York. We have to fix what we broke. Raph... he knew that... knows it. That's why he did it, Mikey. For us. So we could finish what we started... even if..." Leo blinked back tears, refusing to let them fall, "Even if he couldn't."

Mikey continued to stare up at him, and Leo dropped to his knees in front of his brother.

"We're going to find him, Mikey. We are. But it may take awhile. And beating yourself up won't help him. We've just got to be patient, and have a little faith," he put a hand on his brother's shoulder, "So, to that end, how do you feel about heading out and playing spy for awhile?"

Mikey blinked back his tears, snuffled a bit, took a shuddering breath, and nodded.

"Okay. Let's bandage these, and then we'll go, okay?"

When Mikey nodded again, Leo got up, and helped his brother do so as well. Mikey sniffed and wiped an arm across his face to erase the last of the tears, and accepted the hand up. Neither of them said anything about the Game Boy Mikey had smashed, and Leo made no further comment about his brother's bruised and bleeding knuckles either, simply taking out a first aid kit and cleaning the wounds before they headed out into the night.

They didn't say anything because there was nothing more to be said.

* * *

After dark, the wolfdog began to grow bolder. This might have been because wolves were nocturnal, but Raph suspected it was because the lizard had shut down as the cold of the night settled in. If the day had seemed uncomfortably chilly, the night was promising to be a thousand times worse. Raph himself wasn't feeling terribly lively, though he wasn't sure if that was the cold-blooded nature of the reptile, the extent of his injuries, or simply the fact that lying inert in freezing mud was a sure way to lose body heat no matter what sort of creature you happened to be.

He didn't feel like moving, but when the wolfdog ventured in his direction, Raph lifted his head and glared at it sharply. Somewhat more in tune with his animal side than his brothers, Raph typically had no difficulty in silently communicating to wild animals (or mutants) that he would happily tear them to pieces if they made a wrong move.

"Don't even think about it," he growled at the wolfdog, unconsciously baring his teeth as he did so.

An intelligent creature, the wolfdog took the memory of Raph's earlier altercation with the lizard, and his current aggressive look and tone, and decided not to test whether or not he was just bluffing. As the muddied animal slipped out into the moonlight, Raph realized that it was a female, and that she was quite round in the belly, despite the fact that her ribs and hip bones showed through fur which had grown patchy due to lack of care.

Confinement prevented her from foraging for food, or obtaining proper shelter on her own, making her totally reliant on her captor, who was clearly not taking very good care of her. Or any of the others in the pen with Raph, apparently.

Like most turtles, Raph had become fairly self sufficient when it came to finding food at quite an early age. He had relied on Splinter primarily for protection and education in matters of self defense and secrecy. Though he preferred to forget that he and his brothers had once lived on things like algae and worms before they discovered pizza, the fact was that they could and had survived in that manner.

But they had been free to roam the sewers with minimal restrictions, and turtles are among the creatures of the natural world who can pretty much take care of themselves from the time they hatch. Their mutation meant it took a little longer for Raph and his brothers to reach that stage, and their location and eventual lifestyle meant it took even longer, but as far as finding food, they didn't need much help. Only enough space and freedom to do so.

In an enclosure like this one, Raph would be forced to rely on his captor just like the other animals in the pen for provisions. It seemed he could look forward to being hungry, though just now he still felt too sick to even think about food.

The wolfdog was probably most interested in the subject. Even without much in the way of worldly knowledge, Raph had a feeling that bloated look to her stomach meant she was pregnant. He didn't know much about pregnancy, as it had never come up, but it seemed like making new life was probably very energy consuming. And he _did_ know something about using energy and being hungry later.

She prowled around the fence line, pushing her muzzle against the wire in various places, trying to chew on it in others (an attempt which was thwarted because the mesh was too tight for her to get her mouth through and around effectively), and then began to dig around in the mud, her nose to the ground, sniffing. She was clearly hunting for a way out and, failing at that, looking for food.

Raph threatened her every time she came near him, aware of the hungry look in her eyes and every move. Her movements were highly economical, no energy wasted, every twitch of her head purposeful. She ignored the lizard entirely, and the little golden creature kept scurrying away so that she wouldn't see it, though she ignored its scent when she came across it, suggesting she didn't think it was edible.

At one point, she pawed some mud aside, revealing an empty dish. She sniffed inside it, and then grabbed the edge in her mouth and dragged it away. She sniffed underneath it. Raph suspected it was either a food or water dish, but it was empty. Not really understanding it, the wolfdog had pulled it out of the way in the hopes of finding something underneath. To Raph's surprise, she did find some sort of mud covered creature, which she pulled out of the ground and swallowed in two snaps.

That was the only success the wolfdog met with, however. She continued to roam about, searching, pressing her nose against the fence, digging at the mud near the concrete base, searching and finding nothing. Eventually, she returned to her lair under the wood platform, pawed herself a nest in the somewhat drier (and therefore firmer) mud, and curled up with her tail over her nose.


	8. Chapter 8

For Leo and Mikey, the night had proven discouraging, but hardly surprising. Far from their usual line of work, the two brothers had primarily dropped tracking devices built by Donnie onto the vehicles of all the people on the list who looked remotely promising.

Since they didn't really know what they were doing, Leo was reluctant to rule out anybody. They knew that the one person Raph had managed to nail wasn't the only one involved, but Mikey could give no clear description of the others. Leo had of course hoped that one of the addresses Don had dug up would prove to be where Raph was being held, but it simply wasn't to be. His secondary hope was that there would be something telling about the people once he saw them, or their homes or vehicles. Guns with silencers, a photograph of a mutant turtle... something. But his hopes were dashed on that count as well. He knew that chances were pretty high that _none_ of the people he and Mikey had scoped out knew anything about Raph's abduction, but he didn't want to dismiss them as suspects too early.

The problem was that there were only so many turtles, and so many trackers, and so much time in a night. He had to make some calls on which people seemed unlikely suspects, or that the turtles were likely to be able to keep tabs on without benefit of a planted tracker. For Leo, those were tough calls to make. He wanted to give his team every possible chance of finding Raph. Counter-intuitively, that meant choosing to dismiss some people as suspects. Without much to go on, Leo found himself forced to rely on his gut. And he had all the time in the world to second guess himself.

What if that woman with the two little girls secretly worked for a government operation that was rounding up the mutants of New York? What if that guy who worked at a car wash moonlighted as a gang member participating in some kind of weird initiation or something? What if the lady with the cats was an aged member of the Foot Clan, and had commanded the capture of the turtles as some kind of gift to the Shredder in anticipation of her retirement? Any and all possibilities seemed likely in the utter vacuum of knowledge about why this had happened.

It was more likely, however, that these were friends and relatives of the man in the hospital, and probably they had no idea what he'd done. Despite everything, it was Leo's nature to be trusting and to expect the best of people. It was Raph who was suspicious and distrustful by nature, instinctively regarding anything unfamiliar as a potential threat. Leo hadn't realized how much he needed that particular brand of pessimism to balance his own natural way of viewing things. He needed Raph's sour attitude to help him know when he was being overly optimistic about things.

Mikey was more than happy to leave the decisions to Leo and -in Leo's absence- Raph. Ruled more by feeling and impulse than anything, Mikey's judgment was highly variable. Sometimes he could see things the rest of them were blind to... but sometimes it was because those things weren't real. Mikey largely lived in a universe of his own perception, and wasn't very helpful when it came to planning or making decisions about things.

That left only Donnie, who was already overdone with the problems on his end. Leo had seen in his brother's eyes that Don could tolerate no more stress than he had already.

No, these decisions were Leo's, and his alone. If he'd known what he was asking for all that time ago when he'd asked Splinter if he could be the team's leader, Leo felt sure that he never would have asked.

By the end of the night, Leo was worn out just from worrying about whether he was putting trackers on the right people, and if this was a waste of time altogether. He still couldn't shake off the dream, or the brief flash he'd had on waking, the feel of something around his neck, choking him. It seemed so real, and Leo feared that it meant the worst.

They'd been out all night, traveling fast, but kind of in circles, as most of the addresses were in a fairly small radius around where Raph had been caught. There were farther flung addresses, but Leo had higher hopes for the near ones. He didn't have any good reason for it really, it was just... instinct maybe? Or perhaps just wanting a break. Probably the latter.

Sunrise wasn't far off by the time Leo and Mikey called it quits for the night. They couldn't keep running around once it was daylight, not enough shadows. Besides, they needed to rest, so they could do it all over again tomorrow night. Mikey had complained of hunger for the past couple of hours, but Leo had been ignoring him. Once he finally decided to stop for the night, he realized that he was also hungry. For some reason it annoyed Leo to be hungry when one of his brothers was in trouble. It felt like he shouldn't want to eat anything until Raph was found and safe. But his stomach felt differently.

Donnie appeared not to have moved the entire time they were gone. In fact, he seemed startled to see them back, as if he was unaware of how much time had passed.

"Time to call it a night, Donnie," Leo announced, as he passed by the lab on his way to the kitchen.

Don looked up, stared for a few seconds, then roused himself, blinking and stretching, and following Leo and Mikey into the kitchen. None of them had eaten much since Raph was taken, feeling too anxious to be hungry. But the amount of work they'd been putting in demanded food to fuel their efforts, especially if they were to keep it up for long.

Though Leo had been lax the day before, he was determined now to make sure his brothers ate and slept regularly. They couldn't help Raph if they killed themselves just trying to find him. Not tending to their own basic needs would render them worse than useless. Worn turtles were turtles who made mistakes. They could not afford to miss any clue, or be caught themselves. They needed to stay sharp.

It was pizza leftover from two days before, but Leo intended to make sure they got fresher food in the coming days. He needed to make sure they set aside time for things like ordering pizza. Among all of the other things they were, they were teenagers. Their bodies demanded more food and rest than they had needed at any previous time in their lives except maybe right after they were first mutated.

Once they got started, it was obvious that Donnie and Mikey were both extremely hungry, and it became a contest of who could eat a slice of pizza the fastest. Leo himself felt ravenous after his first bite, but he restrained himself. Normally, he would participate readily in competition for food, even though there was plenty for them all. But right now he needed to be their leader, not just their brother. And, right now, that meant making sure they ate as much as they could properly hold, and then toddled off to sleep, either in a bedroom or in the living room.

For just a few brief moments, Leo saw that Donnie and Mikey had shed their grief, and lost themselves in what they were doing. After a long night's work, they needed the break. It didn't last long. Once the worst of the hunger pangs subsided, they became subdued once more. And then, abruptly, they lost interest in eating and wandered lethargically into the living room.

Leo knew why, and he joined them. None of them said anything. They couldn't bear to express their worries aloud. And, though they were usually fighting for their own private spaces, tonight they couldn't stand to sleep in separate rooms. Looking at Splinter's closed door, Leo wondered how his Sensei could possibly tolerate being in there alone.

* * *

Raph was too cold to feel hungry. In fact, he was too cold to feel much of anything.

He'd fallen asleep some time during the night, despite having tried not to. The wolfdog had maintained her distance, as had the lizard. At first, Raph assumed the little creature also had. But then he felt a slight prickling on the almost numb skin on the back of his neck right below the collar.

Startled, he would normally have leaped and twisted around to try and figure out what had him. As it was, he only jerked slightly. It was enough, however. With a shocked hiss, the gold and black creature rolled off him and landed on its back in the mud. It immediately scrambled upright, and began to furiously clean the fur on its back.

Raph stared at it dumbly, his thoughts slow and his consciousness unsteady. He decided he neither knew nor cared what it meant that the little mutant had climbed on him. Thinking about it was too much effort. In fact, thinking about _anything_ was too much effort.

"I thought you were a goner for sure," the little creature said, sitting upright and wiping his whiskered face with his paws and blinking large golden eyes at Raph.

Raph continued to stare at the creature, saying nothing. He was not surprised that the creature talked. Many mutants did. Even if that had not been the case, he was too out of it to feel much surprise about anything.

"I didn't peg you for the intelligent type when you first arrived," the creature continued, "Figured you were more like tall, dark and scaly," he nodded in the direction of the lizard, "All brawn, no brain."

"I get that a lot," Raph ventured quietly, finding his voice was rough and his throat sore.

"I'm not surprised," the creature said, "The way you tore around in here, and picked a fight with the biggest animal you could find first rattle out of the bucket."

Raph chose not to make any remark on this. Normally, his temper might've had something to say about the creature's assessment of things, but right now he didn't care.

"But then you took up talking last night, and I figured, why not take a chance you've got some sense?"

Raph wasn't sure how much sense he had. He also wasn't sure why having sense was important, considering the circumstances.

"You'd be amazed the number of critters around here that haven't even got the sense they were born with left after drinking that soup," the creature snorted derisively, "Can't think what the point of it all is. Now, making more of me, that I could understand. But when you mostly get mindless brutes out of it, well that's where I can't see the sense in it."

"Soup?" Raph asked, his instincts caught by the implications before his mind could figure out what they were.

"Real weird stuff," the creature said, "spilled on the food left out for me. One minute, I'm a nobody, a scrawny stray just looking for my next meal. Next... well, that gets a little fuzzy. After awhile: voila, the gorgeous creature you see before you," he stood up straighter, raising his front paws, and almost tipped over, before dropping back to all fours, "Funny thing, nobody noticed at first. But then I started finding my words, words I'd heard my whole life and never paid attention to. And then I started using those words. Next thing I know, BAM! I get a life sentence in this place."

"Why?" Raph asked.

He understood that the 'soup' to which the creature referred had to be mutagen, but that could be unpacked later. For now, he was most interested in what was going on here and now.

"Search me," the creature replied, "I didn't understand humans when I was a cat, and I don't understand 'em now either. I just watch for my next meal, and try not to get eaten by my room mates."

"Don't you want out?" Raph asked.

"There's no way out," the creature replied with a bob of its head, "You must've seen that yesterday when you went tearing around. The big cheese," another nod in the direction of the black lizard, which was eying them with apparent malice, "He's the strongest one in here, and I'm the cleverest, and neither of us has ever found a way out."

Raph couldn't argue with the statement regarding the lizard anyway.

"So, big green, you got a name?" the creature asked, then added quickly, "Not everybody in here does."

"Raphael," Raph replied.

"Raphael. Very fancy. You come from a high class neighborhood, I bet."

"A sewer, actually," Raph replied.

"Sewer, eh? Well I've heard people on TV talk about alligators, but I never heard anything about... uh... say, what did you used to be anyway?"

"A turtle," Raph answered, adding with a slight edge, "And I'm _still_ a turtle."

"That does explain the shell, doesn't it? Then again, you can get all kinds of funny growths when you start eating that soup. Me, I just got myself a nice pair of thumbs and a fancy human brain. Changed color a little too. Nice and flashy, which suits me fine."

Raph could see other changes, assuming the creature was in fact a mutant cat.

"You got a name to go with that mouth?" Raph asked.

"Me?" the creature scoffed, "Nah, not unless you count Hey You as a name. I'm nobody's pet."

"Hey, neither am I, but I still have a name," Raph pointed out.

"Yeah, and where'd you get that fancy label anyhow?"

"My father," Raph replied.

"Father, eh? I didn't know turtles went in for that kinda thing. Thought you guys were all lone wolf types, if the shaggy dog over there will pardon the expression."

The wolfdog did not appear to have any opinion at all on the matter. She simply lay in her spot, watching, and looking hungrier than ever.

"He's not a turtle," Raph said.

"Adopted, eh? Say, that's nice. Cats aren't much for that, unless humans get involved. Who wants a bunch of hungry mouths that don't belong to them anyway?"

Though he pretended otherwise, it was evident that the creature envied Raph for his family and his name, even if he did come from a sewer. Too proud to admit it, Raph supposed.

Well, he could understand that.

"Well, I've got a brother usually does the naming, but since he's not here, I think I'll be calling you..." Raph's tired brain had trouble coming up with anything, "Spot."

"Spot?" the creature cocked his head, flicking an ear back and forth, "That's got a ring to it. Not fancy like yours, but gets right to the point doesn't it?"

"I'm not that fancy a guy," Raph replied, "My father though... I think he might've liked sons who were a little more... like him. Elegant and refined and all that. But we're a bunch of teenagers raised in a sewer in New York City, what can you expect?"

"NYC? Whew, that must've been a bit of a drive," Spot said with a twitch of his whiskers, "No wonder you were in such a hurry to get outta that box."

"Yeah... uh... where are we, anyway?" Raph inquired, peering around, but seeing the same sights as the day before, and declining to get up and investigate them further.

"Not the city, I can tell you that," Spot replied, resuming washing his face in a way that seemed better suited to a monkey than a cat, "Fact is, this is kinda the middle of nowhere. Think The Land That Time Forgot. Now there's a movie they should show on television more often."

"Fewer dinosaurs, I hope," Raph remarked dryly.

"I mean, we've got _him_," Spot nodded towards the lizard, then looked back at Raph, "And now there's you. You're kind of like a dinosaur."

Rather than address that, Raph decided to turn to a more pressing matter.

"So, don't you guys ever get fed or watered in here?"

Spot's nose twitched, "Sure... sometimes."

That was exactly what Raph had been concerned about. Well, that and several other things.


	9. Chapter 9

"What about the dog?" Raph asked.

They had sat in silence for a time, Spot cleaning his face, and Raph looking for a place that looked like it would be sunny for awhile. He had eventually found such a place, on the opposite side from where he was now. Since the wind was down, he decided to move. Every muscle, sinew and joint cried out in protest, but he managed to get painfully to his feet, limp over and collapse back into the mud, once again partially withdrawing into his shell.

Spot had watched this with a mixture of fascination, concern, and apparent fear. In comparison to Spot, Raph was big, strong and potentially very dangerous. And Spot was clearly used to running whenever anything big started moving around. Raph pretended not to notice the cat's unease. Spot had, with equal politeness, pretended not to notice how much slower Raph was moving today compared to yesterday.

After a little, Raph's thoughts slowly loosened up, and he decided to test out his thinking. From what Spot had told him, the animals here were all either mutants on arrival, or became mutants shortly thereafter. Three of the four animals in this pen were some proof of that. But the wolfdog looked just like any other canid. In fact, Raph couldn't be sure she was even a wolfdog. He wasn't exactly an expert on the subject. She just struck him as Not Dog somehow. There was something wilder than even a feral dog about her. He could _feel_ it, and he trusted the feeling.

"Bunch of dogs was in this pen before us," Spot replied, "I was still free then. So long as I was free, I didn't care much about what went on with other animals. They weren't my problem, ya know?"

In truth, Raph didn't know. Despite all his attitude, Raph had a weakness for the small and helpless. And he had a special fondness for the kind of critters others might look at and call ugly. He supposed it might be partially that he was a turtle. Reptiles didn't seem freaky to him. But his brothers all seemed to have the proper reaction to the things traditionally considered "cute." With the exception of bugs, Raph's heart went out to the sorts of animals people were less fond of.

Regardless, he was a protector. He didn't like to see anything suffer. Not when he could do something about it. But he supposed it wouldn't be fair to expect a stray cat -who was used to being hunted and helpless- to feel the same way as he did.

"Anyhow, I dunno where the dogs came from, but I don't think they were a pack. They spent too much time avoiding each other. When things got thin, they got to snapping at each other too. They drank that soup first chance they got. There's just somethin' about that stuff anyway, but when you're hungry, you can't help yourself. Well... most of us can't," he swung his head in the direction of the wolfdog, twitched his ears, then looked back at Raph, "She took one whiff of the stuff, and walked away. Wouldn't touch it."

That struck Raph as very unusual. Usually, the only way to keep an animal out of mutagen was to actively take the mutagen away. Any animal that didn't drink it outright would step in it. Humans tended to trip and fall into the stuff, but that was a little different from the apparent compulsion animals had. Raph himself had no memory of getting into the mutagen that had changed him and his brothers, though Splinter had told the story often enough.

"The rest of the dogs died, one after the other. A lot of 'em lost fur when they changed, so maybe the cold got to 'em. Or maybe they just got too hungry. That change takes a lot outta ya. Anyway, the bitch is the only one left now. Well, her and the pups. Guess it was too much trouble to get her out of the pen before stuffing me in here. And definitely too much trouble to deal with her once the lizard got involved. And now there's you. We could have a game of bridge, if they knew how to play. And if we had a deck of cards. And if they didn't want to eat me."

Raph didn't point out that he had no idea how to play bridge. Apparently it involved cards.

Though it was far from warm, the sun heated Raph up enough that he felt able to get up and look around the pen again. Unconsciously, he mimicked the wolfdog, prowling along the fence, finding potential weaknesses in the same spots, pressing and pulling at them, discovering they weren't weak enough for him to exploit, and moving on. The wolfdog had found every slightest weakness in the fence, and she apparently probed them nightly, in anticipation of the night when the fence would decay enough for her to push through. Considering the fence's current condition, she might have to wait for years before that would happen. Assuming she lived so long.

The wolfdog watched Raph prowl around, but did not bother to rise as she had done the day before. The lizard also watched, without lifting his head. He'd made his point the day before, and seemed to consider the matter settled. He wasn't wrong. Raph's arm still hurt where the lizard had bitten him, though the bleeding had stopped fairly rapidly. He had no interest in having another go.

In fact, his one interest was getting out. He didn't feel as sick as the day before, the drugs having finally worked out of his system enough for him to start living again, but he still didn't feel hungry. Just cold and miserable. His desire to get out was not rooted in hunger, but in the need to rejoin his brothers.

He'd never been separated from them for so long. Though he had bouts of the need to be alone and to blow off steam somewhere by himself, he was actually used to being quite gregarious (especially for a turtle). Not only did he miss the sounds of the city rumbling over his head, he missed the closeness of his brothers. He missed their voices. He missed seeing them going about their activities nearby while he went about his. He even missed their most annoying habits.

Raph hadn't forgotten the frantic need to rejoin them he'd felt the day before either. Though the feeling had faded somewhat, the message was still loud and clear in his mind. His brothers needed him. He had to find some way to get back to them. If that meant pacing this stupid fence and pushing at it every day for the rest of his life until it broke, so be it. But Raph didn't want to wait that long.

Looking up, he pondered the point where the roof panels joined the walls of the pen. That might be more weakly attached. Raph wouldn't know for sure unless he climbed up there. But it was quite a distance, and the holds were not ideal. Given the weakness in two of his limbs, Raph wasn't sure he could get to the top, much less push against it or inspect it effectively without falling off.

But it was the one place he hadn't checked thoroughly.

"Hey, where ya goin'?" Spot asked, as Raph found and tested holds on the fence.

Deciding it was obvious, Raph declined to answer. The mesh was too tightly woven for a proper grip, but Raph had climbed up the sides of a lot of buildings when he had to. He preferred going up fire escapes, and swinging himself up onto roofs, but he could do the equivalent of rock climbing as well. All the turtles preferred to use equipment up steep climbs with weak holds, but that didn't mean they _couldn't_ do things the hard way. It was just that doing things the hard way was for emergencies. Doing things the easy way was the best strategy most of the time, because it saved energy and lowered overall risk. There were always taxing and high risk portions to a mission. Why make it more dangerous or exhausting than it was bound to be?

The hardest part here was that his shot leg couldn't support his weight. His bitten arm could, but didn't want to. After a couple of tests, he was confident he could make it up the fence. It annoyed him that there wasn't a proper corner, as that would have been ideal for bracing himself, but he supposed that was an intentional part of the design.

"Hey, you fall off there, and you'll regret it," Spot warned, "You ever fall twelve feet and land on your back in cold mud? It don't feel good, I'll tell ya that."

Raph had actually fallen much farther onto much harder surfaces, but he couldn't fault the cat for being worried. After all, the cat had no shell to protect him, and twelve feet was a lot farther to fall when you were his size. But Raph had no intention of falling.

Climbing up was necessarily slow, but once Raph figured out how to get a hold on the wires, it was actually fairly boring, as the openings in the mesh were of a certain size and were at regular intervals, meaning that once he'd figured it out, it was just repeating the same moves over and over to get up. But finding a way to brace himself so that he could push at the top of the fence took a little more doing.

The wolfdog had edged out from under the wooden structure so she could watch. The lizard had hissed as Raph started to go up, and now watched warily, as if expecting him to suddenly drop down onto the wooden platform and pick another fight. The wolfdog was wary, but when Raph glanced down, it seemed as if she understood what he was trying to do better than the mutants in the pen.

Gifted with only animal understanding, her wild nature offered her comprehension of the basic desire to escape captivity in a way that the apparently more intelligent Spot couldn't. Perhaps Spot's mind was more cluttered with other thoughts. Or perhaps his focus was more on eating and surviving than getting out. The lizard's intelligence was unclear, but he seemed to be satisfied with ruling his wooden platform and waiting for food to come to him. Or perhaps he retained more reptilian characteristics than Raph, and was too cold to pursue much of anything.

Though she was the least like him by virtue of not being a mutant, and was also the most likely to try to eat him, Raph found himself becoming most partial to the wolfdog. Spot was nice enough, but he talked a lot and his personality was a bit grating. He also seemed resigned to the hand fate had dealt him. Raph didn't know the wolfdog's personality, but he knew that she wanted to get out as much as he did, and that she was unwilling to give up on the idea, no matter how many times she was defeated.

The point where Raph had climbed up had looked promising from the ground, but it proved to be strongly secured. So he climbed sideways along the fence, testing it as he went, trying to keep from getting so numb from the cold that he couldn't feel what he was doing. He made a half circuit, then the combination of cold and weariness from the awkward positioning caused him to lose his grip, and he fell quite gracelessly back to earth; smacking down hard in the mud.

"I told you!" Spot cried loudly from the other side of the pen, scampering around to see if Raph was okay, "I told you that was no good! There's no way out!"

The wolfdog had started to stalk towards Raph, but he at once flipped himself upright and crouched, glaring at her. She halted with head lowered, her dry tongue swiping around her jaws. Her ears were far forward, and her eyes staring. She was hoping Raph had hurt himself enough to be viable prey. Perhaps she would have thought of him as potential food in any case, but the urgency of her hunger probably made it impossible for her to consider him as anything else.

Raph might have been partial to her, and sympathetic to her plight, but he wasn't about to feed himself to her. He had been in too many dangerous situations in his life to be willing to die here. He'd done too much, and there was still too much to do. He had too much to live for.

His brothers needed him. He had to get out. He had to find a way home. That was what he cared about most. That was what mattered to him above all else. Even if his own survival instinct failed him, his need to be with and protect his brothers would have kept him going.

After a few minutes of catching his breath and rubbing life back into his extremities, Raph got up, climbed back up the fence, and picked up where he'd left off.

"Are you crazy?!" Spot demanded, "Isn't one fall enough for you? There's nothing up there for you!" after a moment he added, "If you kill yourself, I _am_ going to eat you. Don't think I won't!"

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Spot was taking advantage of the protection Raph provided. Raph could keep the wolfdog at bay, and climbing on his back had provided Spot a place out of the icy mud to rest the night before. Spot's concern was primarily his own self interest.

Considering the cat's life up to now, and his present circumstances, Raph couldn't blame him. Raph himself was just as self interested in his way. Resigning himself to his fate in the pen wouldn't help anyone, though. If he could get out, he could be in a position to help the others. Right now, all that was happening was that he was growing weaker. Sooner or later, the wolfdog would have her chance at him. And she was smart enough to take it. And then where would Spot be?

Raph didn't really think it out. He just felt it. Getting out _had_ to be his first priority.

But he'd barely resumed looking for some place where the mesh was worn, or the ties flimsy when he became aware of a presence near the back of the house. He'd practically forgotten the house, it had been of so little relevance up to now. But the sense of someone or something coming was a carefully honed skill, and Raph's subconscious had kept tabs on his surroundings while he worked.

He dropped to the ground, and reflexively slipped into the shadows provided by the wooden platform, putting it between himself and the door. Spot scampered away to the other side, making a wide arc around the platform to avoid enticing the wolfdog out. But she had flattened to the ground at Raph's approach, and had no eyes for the cat.

A short time later, the back door opened and a man stepped out onto the porch. At once, there was a riot's worth of noise from all around, as myriad animals of unguessable sorts screeched, brayed, barked, yowled and generally carried on, until it was just a mass of deafening and meaningless sound.

The wolfdog joined in, howling from under the platform, periodically breaking into a kyi-yi-yi sound that wasn't properly barking or howling either one. Spot meowed, rubbing himself against the fence near the gate, apparently abandoning all of his ideas of being a higher life form now. The lizard made no sound, but lifted himself up from where he was lying, flicking the air with his tongue excitedly.

Raph didn't recognize the guy on the porch, but he sure seemed to be making an impression. Every penned animal seemed to be trying to attracted the man's notice, presumably so they could get the man to come to them. Raph wondered why they would want that.

He decided to stay low for the moment, wait and see what happened. After what he'd gone through before he was left in this pen, he wasn't all that keen on getting close to any strange human.


	10. Chapter 10

It was soon obvious why the other captives were so high on the human. Using trays specially designed to lock onto the lower part of the gate so that he could slide the panel aside and shove them into the pen without giving any of the inmates a chance to escape (or try to bite or claw him) the man began to push food and water pans into the pens, one pen at a time.

Raph couldn't see how the other residents handled it, but he saw that Spot quickly snapped up a few morsels, running off with what looked like a hunk of chicken as the wolfdog rushed him. She had remained under the wooden platform until the man went on to the next pen, as if her fear of him overcame even her hunger and thirst. But the second he was gone, she took over the food pan, snarling at Spot even as he fled to a far corner to finish bolting his food down.

The reason for her hurry became apparent as the lizard slowly turned himself around and climbed down the ramp, making his way eagerly towards the pans. Raph knew the lizard could move much more rapidly when necessary, but the cold made him disinclined to do so, and probably also slowed his metabolism so that he wasn't as hungry as the mammals he was caged with.

But, once he arrived, the lizard immediately hissed and tried to push the ravenous wolfdog away. She snarled at him, snapped, and then dodged out of the way as he swung his jaws at her. Raph knew what those jaws had done to his arm, and suspected what they were capable of on the soft body of a starving dog. The wolfdog took no chances, but continued to pace around nearby, slipping in at the slightest sign of opportunity to snatch a strip of meat from under the lizard's nose.

Fearless now that both predators were occupied with the free lunch, Spot circled them from a respectful distance, and arrived neatly at the water pan, which he pulled off the tray with a forepaw, dragging it several feet in, and then settled down for a long drink.

The yard became fairly quiet as the captives stopped calling and presumably settled down to fighting amongst themselves over the meager portions they had been allotted. Raph wondered when they'd last been fed. He'd suspected they were not being cared for when he'd noticed how thin his cell mates were, but seeing the desperation with which they went after their food brought it home.

Spot had risked showing his back to the wolfdog to get a few extra bites, trusting that she would be so focused on the food in the pan that she would let him get away. And, though the lizard could clearly kill her if she failed to stay out of his reach, the wolfdog continued to dance around him, just so she might frantically snap up a tidbit here and there.

Raph knew that domestic animals didn't do well without someone to care for them, but he felt that they all -domestic or not- would be better off running loose where they might at least be able to look for food, water and proper shelter. It seemed to him that being hit by a car and killed instantly might be preferable to what seemed to him to be slow torture.

But perhaps that was only his view from the inside, and his own wild nature talking. Raph was never one to deny when he was biased about something.

The food pan was emptied in a matter of moments. The lizard turned and waddled back to his makeshift throne, but the wolfdog turned on Spot, driving him away from the water dish in growling fury. She then drank from the dish until it was completely empty. She flipped it over, dug under it, found nothing, and then did the same with the food pan.

Spot ran away only a short distance, then continued at a dignified trot until he found where Raph had crouched. He sat and lifted his front paws, licked them, and swiped them down his whiskers, then licked them again, cleaning his face thoroughly of every trace of meat.

"See?" Spot said cheerfully, "We get fed."

Raph, completely stunned by what he had just seen, couldn't find any words at all, and simply stared at Spot. There had been no food yesterday, he knew. Was Spot really expected to live on just the few ounces of meat he'd managed to secure for himself for days at a time? That one food pan hadn't been big enough to hold sufficient food for the wolfdog even if she'd been fed regularly, forget the rest of them. And was it nothing but some rather ripe smelling scraps of meat for them?

He shuddered, and not from the cold.

"The pan'll be good if it rains," Spot continued, seemingly unaware of the internal horror Raph was trying to come to terms with, "At least until she chews it to shreds again. She always does eventually. Can't help it, I suppose. Frustration from looking for what isn't there. Darned nuisance though. If she'd just leave it alone, we'd have more water, and more often too."

"And... you _live_ like this?" Raph managed hesitantly.

Spot looked up at him, his eyes very large and round, "Well, sure. You get used to it after awhile," he rolled onto one haunch to free up a hind leg so he could scratch an errant flea, then he seemed to forget why he'd lifted the leg and waxed thoughtful, "Anyway, it's not so bad if you give up the idea of trying to get out. And the sooner the better, you know. Best to save your energy. Never know how long it might be before your next meal and all," he remembered what the foot was for and scratched behind his ear, his eyes rolling as he found the itchy spot and gave it a thorough kicking.

Raph didn't say he'd rather die than accept this kind of life, which was no life at all. Spot had resigned himself to endurance, and criticizing that acceptance seemed like it would be cruel when Raph had no alternative to offer at present. Instead, he got up and went to investigate the pans and the tray to see what -if any- use they might be.

The wolfdog fled at his approach, returning to her usual hiding place, while Spot went skittering in the opposite direction and slowly made his way over to Raph. He took the opportunity to pull the food pan off the tray. Raph guessed the tray, and anything on it, got pulled out at some point. Spot wanted as many pans in the pen as he could get, so that they'd fill with rain water.

It was clever, Raph had to admit.

The pans were shallow rubber things, not rightly pans or buckets, but some cross between them. The tray was of a thick, weather-resistant plastic, and had been locked into place by a latch on the outside. It fit perfectly in the gate, filling the space left by the panel. There seemed no way to damage or remove it from the inside, so Raph quickly abandoned trying.

He returned to the place along the fence where he'd been interrupted. Spot followed closely.

"Oh come on, not this again," Spot moaned, "You're just gonna hurt yourself."

Raph ignored him, and climbed up the wall.

He didn't even make it all the way up before he came crashing back down. He had no reserves of energy left to draw on after the cold night. He was beginning to regret not having secured a share of the meager resources they'd been offered, especially water. He just didn't have the strength to keep up on the fence, especially not with the injuries he had. There was no choice but to give it up for the moment.

As he had done that morning, Raph sought out the sunniest patch of mud he could find, lay down on his plastron, pulled in his limbs, and tried to soak up as much warmth as he could, careful to orient himself so he had a view of the wooden platform (and its occupants both on and under), and the house.

Spot climbed up on his carapace, curled up, and began to purr loudly. Raph didn't object. In fact, once he'd gone down, he couldn't find any energy to object to anything for a long time.

* * *

When darkness engulfed the city for the night, the turtles were already up. After a brief delay during which they ordered pizza and wolfed it down, they picked up where they'd left off the night before.

A light sprinkling rain was all that was left over. Because they had a lot of ground to cover, and also because it was colder than Leo wanted them to be out in for a long time, they took the Shellraiser. None of them had much to say as they went to work.

There didn't seem to be anything to say.

Don was reassigned to his post in the Shellraiser, though Leo had no intention of his leaving it. Instead, he'd stay in the back with his equipment, now not only finding out more about any individuals they'd found even a scrap of information on in the apartment, but also keeping an eye on the vehicles they'd put trackers on. Leo and Mikey went back to the surface, to cross more names off the list, and to check up on the ones Leo had decided they could keep an eye on without benefit of tracking.

It struck him anew how massive an operation this was for three turtles who didn't really know what they were doing, but he quickly pushed his concern aside. The simple fact of the matter was he didn't know what else to do, and it was obvious that Mikey needed to be doing _something_. Leo needed that too, though he was reluctant to admit it. However small the chance, he had to know that he'd at least tried everything that he and his brothers could think of to find Raphael.

The storm had finally broken sometime during the day prior, and the streets and rooftops were slick with rainwater, though of course the first evidence of rain Leo and Mikey found on their way out was the amount of water they found in the drainage tunnels. It wasn't a flood, but it had been a pretty fair storm from the looks of things. Leo had slept through the whole thing.

Mikey didn't appear to have participated in any more self destructive behaviors, but the look in his eyes warned Leo that he wasn't far from it. All the turtles were closely bonded, but it had always seemed to Leo that Mikey and Raph had a special relationship. Given the opportunity, Mikey was a pest to anyone and everyone. But Raph was ever his favorite target, and it seemed to be more than that the red-masked turtle was easily provoked. Raph voluntarily stuck close to Mikey even when they weren't on a mission. Given the way that Mikey seemed to perpetually be annoying to him, the behavior was odd. But you had to pay attention to what Raph did, not what he said. And what he did said he wasn't just acting as control for Mikey's nonsense, not just his protector, not just his brother, but his friend as well.

The hole left in the lives of all the turtles by their brother's absence was enormous and painful, but for Mikey it was worse, not only because of the special bond he had with Raph, but because he was far more in tune with his emotions than the rest of them. One might even say he was ruled by them. While Leo and Donnie could bury their emotions in logic and strategy and other occupations, Mikey didn't have any distraction. He only had emotions he couldn't get through as long as he didn't know whether his brother was alive or dead.

None of them really knew how to grieve for a dead member of the family because they'd never had to do it before. But the not knowing made it worse. They weren't even sure if they _should_ grieve or not. Raph was gone, no denying that, and Leo wasn't willing to give up on him, but how were they supposed to feel in the meantime?

"Hey, guys, listen to this," Donnie's voice from the back of the Shellraiser was so unexpected that Leo actually jumped a little, and briefly glanced over his shoulder.

Mikey looked equally startled. They'd been at it for just over an hour. During that time, they'd made several stops where Leo and Mikey got out, but no words had been exchanged between any of them.

"I found a website address on one of the scraps of paper we picked up," Donnie continued, "It seems to be for a science blog of some kind."

"Science blog?" Leo queried.

Don went on as though he hadn't heard, "Listen to the first paragraph of this post: 'New York City is the most populous city in the United States, and is home to over eight million people. With just over three hundred square miles of land area, you wouldn't expect to find much in the way of wildlife in the paved roads and planned communities of this densely populated city'."

"Okay, bored now," Mikey remarked.

"Let him read, Mikey," Leo advised.

Mikey rolled his eyes, but fell silent, and Donnie went on, "'I came to New York with the intention of finding and studying a rare, previously undocumented species rumored to live in the city. I didn't have much hope. Reports were sketchy at best, and not even the locals seemed to have much in the way of knowledge when it came to the habits of these elusive creatures. Where could they be found? What did they eat? Were they mammal, reptile or something else entirely? Nobody could answer that question. For over three weeks, I searched the city for any sign, and spoke with many people. But all I heard were rumors. At the end of the third week, my team and I were beginning to despair of ever finding any sign of these creatures. But then, a lucky break. As we were driving home one evening after a fruitless day of searching, one of my assistants spotted something leaping along the rooftops.'"

Don had their full attention now, and nobody said anything when he paused this time.

"'There they were, four of them, cavorting about the rooftops like some kind of monkeys, just as real as you or I. At first, we found it difficult to tell them apart, but after following them for a time and making notes, we found each to be unique in coloration and marking. Though their physical appearance suggests a terrapin ancestry, their behavior is more that of wolves, with a strict hierarchy and predatory hunting tactics. They are extremely territorial and clash violently with other animals from time to time, though the reasons are unclear as their eating and breeding habits are as yet undocumented. They each bear a different color and, though it is unclear whether or not the colors are permanent, we have already begun to call each by the color mask it has. There is a clear leader, Blue, whose rule is absolute if not unchallenged. He is the pack's Alpha. Orange is the omega, less dominant than the others and more likely to be picked on. As the smallest, Orange probably also has more difficulty holding his own when they catch prey as a group. Purple and Red are of unclear rank, though Red is easily the most aggressive member of the pack, and obviously wants to take Blue's Alpha status from him. All we have seen appear to be male, and it is unclear where the females can be found'."

"Whoa, dude, they could be talking about us," Mikey marveled.

"Mikey, they _are_ talking about us," Leo said.


	11. Chapter 11

"What bothers me," Leo said after a moment, "Is why haven't we noticed them following us? Close enough to see us fight, and recognize us by our masks?"

"We have been a little busy with mutagen and mutants, lately," Mikey ventured, and Leo hated to admit to himself that the logic was sound, "Maybe a little too busy to notice anything else."

"It gets worse," Don told him, "Here's from a more recent post: 'My concern for The Pack grows. As the weather turns colder, I fear for their survival. As uniquely rare as these creatures are, it is vital that as many of them survive as possible. It only makes sense to cull the weakest from The Pack, so that the others are not burdened with sharing resources with it. It will also give me the opportunity to study one in captivity. Unfortunately, they are so quick and athletic that simply darting them is out of the question, we'll lose sight of them by the time they go down. Thus, we will have to take measures to trap one, and then dart it for transport.'"

"They went for Mikey and caught Raph instead," Leo realized, "Because they think Mikey is the weakest. They wanted to catch him and cage him."

"It's a lot worse than that," Don said, "They wanted to do that without knowing anything about him. Drugs don't affect reptiles the same way they do mammals. Something harmless to a human or other mammal can be deadly to a turtle. And anyway they had only a vague idea of how heavy Mikey actually is. They don't know what we eat, or anything about how we live. Even if we _were_ wild animals, which we're not, you'd have to know a heckuva lot more than this guy does before you could have any hope of keeping such an animal alive and healthy. It would be very easy for them to overdose on the drugs, for example, and kill us outright, especially if you couple that with the trauma of having been shot. What we're looking at is the blog of a would-be scientist, someone who actually has no idea what they're doing, but likes to pretend. And apparently has the resources to do it."

The turtles were silent for a moment, while that sunk in. Then Don went on.

"Fortunately, there's a more recent post," Don said, though he had trouble keeping his voice level as he read, "'Red is more violent than expected, vicious even. He has limited capacity for speech, and seems to understand when spoken to. But because his first impulse is to attack, it was necessary to restrain him for examination, and to sedate him in order to treat the injuries he incurred on capture, and to transport him safely. Unfortunately, his species seems particularly affected by the drug used and the creature was very ill prior to transport. It also has a faster metabolism than expected, and was fully awake upon its release, at which time it again tried to attack researchers.'"

Leo was not often given to fits of anger, but he felt a quiet rage building up against the people who'd done this. Somehow, it was more insulting to be used as Raph was being used than to be killed outright. Leo guessed Raph felt the same way. It was not only degrading to be tied down and have people do things against your will, it was also that you were being violated.

He could well imagine the helplessness Raph must be feeling, probably no small about of shame in his inability to escape as well. It was worse than that these people could've killed him through sheer ignorance, they'd also clearly humiliated him. There was a healthy sort of humility, but it did not spring from the sort of treatment Leo suspected underlay the mild wording of the blog.

Their 'measures to trap one' had been a bullet. Leo shuddered to imagine what the meanings behind 'restrained' and 'examination' were. He was glad to know his brother was alive, but that knowledge came with a new horror, bringing to his imagination a thousand possible things he hadn't even considered previously. Against his better judgment, Leo found himself thinking of Leatherhead, and all that he had gone through at the tentacles of the Kraang.

"Well, at least we know he's still kicking," Leo managed to remark, albeit somewhat shakily.

"Sure, for now," Don agreed, "But for how much longer?"

"Is there some kind of name or location for this place they took him to?" Leo asked.

"Yeah, Doctor Irving Laurenson," Don said, then went on, "But it's hundreds of miles north of us," he shook his head miserably, "We'd never get that far unnoticed, especially not in the Shellraiser."

"We'll just have to take that risk," it was Mikey who said this, and there was a surety in his gaze that Leo didn't see very often, "This is our brother. We _have_ to try."

* * *

If Leo had concerns about Splinter's forbidding them from going so far, they were alleviated almost at once upon their return to the lair. Hearing what Donnie had found out, he had one thing to say:

"Go. Find your brother. And bring him home."

They were gearing up for a lengthy road trip. Now they had a pretty good idea where Raph was, based on the general area, revealed by the blogger's profile, as well as bits and pieces of information Don was able to put together by information contained in various posts on the blog, they abandoned all other endeavors to track him down. It was going to be a long haul northward, and every second might count.

"We can expect snow to get in our way before we're through," Donnie warned, "So we should be prepared for that. And we also want to take all the medical supplies we can."

He didn't explain why, and he didn't have to. Leo had not forgotten the concerns Don had sort of skirted the edges of earlier. Drugs, wounds, incorrect food... all of that was bad enough. There was no telling what kind of shape Raph would be in by the time they reached him, even if nothing further was done to him. If Leo had known Raph was being held outdoors without adequate shelter, he could have added prolonged exposure to his list of worries.

But the list was plenty long enough already. The turtles had never undertaken a journey of this sort, though of course they had dreamed of road trips, and it was tough to know where to start. Splinter helped where he could, and warned them of possible hazards they might meet on the road, but it had been many years since he had traveled, and he had not traveled in quite this way.

Fortunately, Donnie had been clever about equipping the Shellraiser for emergencies, and it was almost like a mobile home all on its own. _Almost_. They were about to test the significance of that word.

Briefly, they were interrupted in their preparations by Don's laptop dinging, letting him know about a new post on the blog, which he read aloud to Leo, who listened grimly.

"'I am beginning to reconsider Red's apparent aggression. When approached by me, he shrank back and hid, and even the enticement of food could not lure him out. It is possible, even probable, that his apparent aggression has its root in fear. Fear of humans is not unusual in species which have close contact with man, though his reaction is more extreme than any other animal I am presently studying. Assuming he is typical of his species, it is possible that we are looking at a scavenger species rather than a predatory one, which would make their organized pack structure highly irregular.'"

Don sighed and sat back, shaking his head with evident disgust, "Armchair scientists. They hear a couple of facts, watch a few documentaries, and develop strong, complicated views on subjects without even testing their beliefs. Worse, some get a degree and then throw away everything they've learned without even doing a real check to see if it's accurate or not. And then they start running and publishing studies and people believe them because they've got a degree but no sense. Next thing you know, it takes decades to untangle fact from fiction, and that's if you're lucky enough to be able to tell which is which. In the meantime, you've got tons of people getting filled up with nonsense they think is fact. Nothing more dangerous in the world than an incompetent fool with a valuable piece of documentation pegging him as an expert in his field who thinks he's right all the time and everyone else is wrong."

"Okay..." Leo said, "I think you need to take a breath, and remember that the important thing isn't how stupid this Laurenson guy is, but the fact that he is holding our brother prisoner."

"Which is something he wouldn't be able to do if he didn't know just enough science to support his faulty ideas," Donnie replied sharply, "You can't base a study on an entire species with just one captive animal. You need more before you get any useful data. And you need to observe them in the wild, without human interference as well."

"Thanks for the science lesson, D, but we need to stay on track," Leo persisted.

The reason Donnie was harping on the subject was obvious. Donnie was brilliant, and largely self-taught. He'd received fundamental lessons from Splinter early on, but had quickly outpaced his master when it came to matters of science and technology. He was wrong more often than he was right, but that was always the case with inventors. But the thing was, he'd read and digested every article he could find on the subjects of interest, researching them thoroughly, coming up with theories, and testing them carefully. He lacked a degree, and thus the credibility inherent to one, but he was a true scientist. All the non-scientists practicing in his fields of study angered him, whether they had degrees or not.

Leo didn't know if this Laurenson character had an actual doctorate, or if he'd just put that on the blog name to sound professional, and he didn't really care. He sounded like another in an increasingly long line of crackpot doctors the turtles had bumped up against. All Leo really cared about was that Irving Laurenson had stolen his brother, and that made him a bad guy.

It concerned him that he and his brothers would be exposed for a long period of time. They were used to traveling in the city, which they knew very well. There were plenty of out of the way places they could take the Shellraiser where no one would see it. It was fully capable of acting as their own personal tank to protect themselves. Assuming they needed to abandon it for any reason, there were a million places they could go and disappear. They knew the alleys, the rooftops, the abandoned buildings. Every bit of the city was an extension of their home, and they could find their way back to the lair from almost any point that allowed them access to the sewer system.

But on an extended drive, they'd often be far from any tunnels, possibly away from places to conceal the Shellraiser as well, and completely in the open. Not a problem at night, which was when they usually drove around the city, because people mostly weren't out and couldn't see well in the dark. But what about during the day? Could they count on being ignored in a vehicle more readily identifiable than the Mystery Machine? They would have to. Leo didn't like it one bit, but that's how it was.

It was either that, or abandon their brother to fate. And that was something they could not do.

"I want to keep us moving," Leo told Donnie, "We're looking at a minimum of seven hours travel time, longer depending on traffic and whether or not we get lost, and we don't know what we're walking into, so I want us to go in shifts. Donnie, you'll take the first shift, I'll take the second."

"Ooh, ooh, what about me?" Mikey asked hopefully.

"No," Leo replied.

"Aw..." Mikey frowned.

For just a brief moment, Mikey had seemed like himself again, wanting to touch things he shouldn't, and being disappointed by Leo's refusal to let him. Then he got quiet again, and the sober look returned to his face. He took one of the boxes Donnie had packed with supplies and carried it to the Shellraiser. It was such a normal action, but it physically hurt Leo to watch him, because Mikey just wasn't himself.

Though it was Raph who had been taken, to Leo it felt like his other brothers were fading too. Mikey was so hurt he hardly even talked. And Donnie had been run ragged, and spent far too many hours in a row gazing intently at a computer screen. He was tired, easily distracted, unusually irate. Leo didn't realize that he was also behaving strangely, giving orders without confidence, and frequently looking lost as he searched for something that wasn't there.

Raph needed their help, of that there could be no doubt.

But _they_ also needed _him_.

* * *

Finally, the Shellraiser was packed. The turtles said goodbye to Splinter, and then they set out. Leo made a go of trying to sleep in the back so he'd be rested enough to drive in the morning. He slept only in fits and starts, often interrupted by nightmares.

Mikey, who could usually be counted on to get into some sort of foolishness, sat largely inert, staring blankly out the windshield. Periodically he would be taken by fidgets, but otherwise he sat still. He was too worried to even ask "are we there yet?" over and over again.

The tension radiating from Mikey made it even harder for Leo to try and sleep. Eventually, he gave up, and went up front to sit near Donnie, and stare out at the dark city streets.

Clouds filled the sky, and the temperature had dropped in the last few hours. There was a clear promise of snow in the air. It felt strange to Leo that he was going to be leaving the city, and wouldn't see the first snowfall of the year. He couldn't remember a time when he and his brothers hadn't slipped to some storm drain near the surface to watch the first snowfall. It was a natural part of their lives, something they didn't even really think about doing. They just felt the change in the weather, and went somewhere they could observe that change take place. Then they would go back to the lair, glad they had somewhere warm to hang their masks, happy they had a home, and a family.

It was one of those things they did together. April had talked about planning to get together with her friends to do something, and not seeing relatives for weeks, months or even years. To Leo, it was unimaginable. His brothers were always nearby, and he saw them every day. To him and his brothers, that was normal and right, just like living in the lair, and just like watching the snow roll in overnight.

Now, quite suddenly, all of that had changed. With time to do nothing but think, it finally struck Leo how their lives had been turned upside down by a single moment. The moment a man had decided to curtail their freedom with the bullet from a gun, not because he had any reason to hate them or feel threatened by them, but simply because he could.


	12. Chapter 12

Dawn.

The first wan rays of light hit the side of the pen where Raph had parked himself to rest the night before. The day was overcast, and promised to be colder than the ones which had preceded it. But it didn't feel like rain or snow to Raph. In fact, it felt completely unfamiliar to him. Though he had spent most of his life functionally outdoors, and had always been very in tune with the weather of his home, everything felt strange here. The sounds were different, the sights were different, and it even seemed like the sky itself was different. Even the wind blew in an unfamiliar and discomforting way.

The colder conditions did not bode well. Raph was turtle enough for the cold to make him feel slow, and human enough for it to make him feel sick. He was thirsty like he'd never been in his life. He didn't feel hunger so much as a pain which seemed to originate from his center, and which extended to all corners of his body, making him tremble whenever he tried to move.

If he didn't find a way out today, he might as well give up on the idea completely. The effects of the cold, and the fact that it was getting colder still, coupled with all of his other problems, meant that he was almost at the end of his rope. Even if he did get out of the pen, he would be unable to go far. It was possible that it would shortly be cold enough that he would barely be able to stand.

Cold took a huge toll on energy reserves. At his age, Raph was burning energy rapidly. His body was used to strenuous exercise, but prolonged exposure had even that beaten in the amount of energy it took to keep a body going. And Raph was used to eating regularly. He had never been denied the essentials of food and water before, and he was not equipped to cope with it.

He could continue to live for an indefinite period under these conditions barring any illness he acquired due to a weakening immune system, but he would not be able to fight or escape. Unlike the wolfdog, Raph did not have the option of patience when it came to getting out. For him, the situation was already desperate, growing worse by the minute.

Getting up was harder than Raph had imagined was possible. Every joint was stiff with cold. Every muscle seemed to shake under his skin, tapping rapidly lowering energy reserves to obey his commands. His throat was on fire, and the skin of his neck felt blistered and raw from the combination of the cold and the ill-fitting collar rubbing on him.

Raph was conscious of the collar every second, hating it, ignoring the irrational urge to waste what little energy he had on trying to tear free of the accursed thing. Of all the things tormenting him, it seemed like the collar was the most trivial, but it distressed him above all else.

"Tell me you're not still on that escape kick?" Spot grumbled as Raph started towards the nearest gate, "You've gotta be smarter than that. You've searched the whole place top to bottom for a weakness, and haven't found one. You gotta give it up, and focus on savin' your energy."

Raph couldn't take it anymore. Angrily, he whirled on Spot and fixed him with a glare.

"Save my energy for what? Huh?! What's the point of surviving, just to live another day in Hell? You tell me that, smart guy!" he snarled, and Spot shrank back from his fury with wide eyes that were suddenly fearful, "You give me one good reason to keep living if this is all I've got to look forward to for the rest of my life. One good reason, that's all! Just _one_! You can't, can you? That's because there _is_ nothing good! Nothing and no one should live like this. There is no life here!"

Raph's tirade had caused the lizard to lift his head, but then the lizard put it down again, realizing Raph was not threatening him. The wolfdog under the wooden platform had slowly risen to a crouch, probably hoping that Raph was about to attack Spot, hoping to make a meal of the mutant cat. But her hopes were in vain. Raph was angry, and frustrated, but he wasn't about to hurt Spot because of it.

Exhausted by the energy consumed by the power of his own useless fury, Raph turned away, and limped over to the fence. He put his hands against it, and then leaned with all his weight. There was little give in the fence, just like the day before. Wearily, he rested his forehead against it, trying to steady his breathing, and ease the ache in his lungs, and tried to clear his head.

The wind kicked up, strong enough that Raph swayed when it pushed against him. Or perhaps it was more proof of his weakening condition. He didn't want to think about it.

A little voice in the back of his head said he couldn't do this. Even if he got out, he was a million miles from home, with little idea of where to go, or how to get there. There was a lot of wilderness out there, and he had no functional training in how to survive in it, only some vague memories of things he'd been told. It was probable that only death waited for him out there.

But if he got out, then he'd have a fighting chance to at least try to survive. Try to find his way home. And, if he died, at least he wouldn't die in a cage. That was worth trying for. Worth dying for.

Taking as deep a breath as the cold air allowed, Raph straightened up, and took a step back so he could look the fence up and down. There _had_ to be a place where it was weathered, where a tie was weak or could be bent, and he'd just missed it somehow. He couldn't give up. He had to keep trying.

Raph had no idea how close his brothers were to finding him. He didn't know if they were being hunted down one after the other. Didn't know if they would be showing up here the way Raph himself had, or if they would die during capture or transport.

The gate Raph had gone to was on the far side away from the house. So far, it seemed to serve no purpose. It was built like the main gate, minus the separate panel on the lower half. It was just a solid metal bar frame with wires of galvanized steel stretched across it and tied to it with wire. Raph had investigated these ties before, and there was one in the lower right hand corner that seemed just not quite as tight to the frame as the others.

Raph sat down in the mud, leaning against the fence with his shoulder, and began to fuss with the wire tie. It was one thing to be able to shift it ever so slightly, but what Raph wanted to do was bend it enough to completely remove it. That was easier said than done. The wire was strong, and had been bent into shape using tools, not bare hands. It was tight enough to the frame that you couldn't get a finger under it, and of course Raph had larger fingers than the average human anyway.

But multiple nights of observation had shown that this was a spot the wolfdog went to with some frequency. She seemed to think that it was the most promising place to push against and bite at the mesh and dig at with her paws. Raph's inspection of the fence led him to agree, though he had no intention of trying to bite the wire for himself.

Spot watched him, looking disgusted, but he made no further attempt to dissuade Raph from his escape attempts. Either Raph had struck a nerve with his little speech, or else the cat had merely accepted that he wasn't going to listen to Spot's idea of reason.

* * *

_Six hours is a long time_, Leo thought.

He'd never felt that way before. Six hours of training wasn't anything. Even six hours in silent meditation wasn't too bad, though Leo was privately glad Splinter seldom imposed it. Six hours of television, when he could get away with it (which wasn't often), was a thrill.

But six hours in a car was an eternity.

Especially with Mikey slowly morphing into a hyperactive ball of energy in the back while Don was silently reading the blog, probably because he couldn't sleep.

The long road stretched away ahead, seemingly straight but requiring minor corrections from time to time, thereby preventing Leo from completely zoning out and focusing on his own thoughts. Now and then, oncoming headlights flashed through the grayish dawn and Leo would freeze, suddenly not sure what to do. Then they would breeze on by and he would sigh with relief.

In the dark, the Shellraiser might be mistaken for a very large van, nothing more. Certainly no one would suspect the contents of the vehicle. Leo was counting on a fundamental fact of human nature to disguise the turtles and van all the way to their destination: people see what they expect to see.

Now it was getting light, the unusual nature of the van would be plain for all to see. But the world was full of unusual vehicles, which were used in film and performances of various sorts. Leo was counting on people seeing the van, assuming it was some kind of prop for something, and looking no closer. A closer inspection would reveal that it was essentially a war machine, meant to take the worst that the enemies of the turtles could dish out, and give as good as it got.

"Are we there yet?" Mikey asked, for the sixth time in the last ten minutes.

"No," Leo's response had become so automatic he wasn't even aware of having said anything, "We're not there yet. I'll let you know when we get there."

"Are we almost there?" Mikey inquired, this second question always followed within five seconds of receiving the answer to the first one.

Leo read off the street sign they were approaching.

"Now look at the map and you tell me," Leo said, though he would neither hear nor process what Mikey's answer would be, but at least it would keep him busy for a minute.

At first, he'd been relieved that Mikey had resumed his normal behaviors. He was glad that his brother was back to being his annoying self. But, the thing about annoying people... they're annoying. Leo knew that Mikey was just excited that they were getting closer to finding Raph, and kind of preemptively relieved as well. But Leo had worry upon worry stacking up in his mind, and he knew finding out where Raph was being held was less than half the battle.

Especially since they had gotten off course sometime during the night. Leo wanted to blame Donnie for it, but he suspected that it was actually that his own internal distractions which had caused _him_ to take a wrong turn, not Don. Anyhow, they'd lost time trying to correct it, especially since Mikey was the one reading the map, an arrangement which was -in retrospect- a terrible idea.

But Leo and Don were doing the driving, and trying to sleep or at least rest when it wasn't their shift, so that they would be more alert when they finally reached their destination.

Just as he was beginning to consider how many more times he could answer Mikey's inane questions before completely losing his mind, Leo's thoughts were unexpectedly derailed by Donnie. He was so startled by the unexpected words that came out of his brother's mouth that he was sure he hadn't heard right. Mostly, it was a series of swears.

"What?" Leo asked, cautiously edging the van towards the side of the road.

"No, no, keep going," Don replied, not looking up.

"What is it?" Mikey lunged across the Shellraiser to look over Donnie's shoulder, and promptly unleashed some objectionable words of his own.

At that point, Leo had to pull to the edge of the road and stop so he could go back and see what his brothers were looking at. It was an action he regretted immensely.

Apparently this Laurenson guy wasn't just interested in the turtles, as Donnie had found a somewhat older blog post about around a half dozen mutant dogs that he'd managed to capture. Except, according to the series of photographs, they hadn't been mutants when Laurenson acquired them. But their mutation wasn't what had upset Mikey and Donnie so. It was the photos that came after.

It seemed that the animals had turned on each other, and several of them had died of injuries inflicted by their fellows, many of which became infected afterward. It was difficult to tell with mutants because their forms were so affected by mutagen, and photos were insufficient proof of it in themselves, but it looked like the last of the dogs had died of starvation. The photos of the muddy, matted, mangy animals were graphic, especially for the unprepared turtles, who had never seen anything like it in their lives.

This man was making mutants on purpose, which was bad enough. But he had also failed to separate the animals he was "keeping in captivity for research" when they began attacking each other. He had not seen to their injuries (even though, as the turtles knew only too well, he was not shy about darting his subjects with sedatives or tying them down). Those two things were quite evident from the photos, as well as the blog post itself, which made no mention of any attempt to interfere with the animals, as if such action had not even been under consideration. That the animals had starved to death was mere guess, and nothing in the blog mentioned testing how long the animals could survive without food, or anything of that sort.

"It could be some kind of wasting disease, or maybe the mutation itself was a bad one that killed them. I've never seen a mutation, even a secondary one, do something like that but it's theoretically possible," Don said, then shook his head, "But I think Irving Laurenson killed those dogs, either intentionally or through sheer ignorance and neglect. Animals behave differently in captivity than they do in the wild, and they rely completely on their keepers to take care of them and deal with any dangerous behaviors that manifest. This guy... he took these animals, confined them, and then just... I can't..." he shook his head again, more vehemently this time, "There aren't words for something like this."

Leo agreed. But he also realized that, for the dogs, the danger had passed. The dogs were already dead, and could not be saved. But Irving Laurenson still had Raphael. That realization alone was enough to make Leo feel sick inside with fear for his brother.

He decided that there were worse feelings than not knowing, and this was one of them.


	13. Chapter 13

Very often, actually being in a bad situation doesn't feel as horrifying as hearing about it, or even thinking about it later. Raph was not feeling especially horrified by his circumstances, merely frustrated. Though that frustration was tinged with a smattering of hope.

Despite there being nothing in the pen that he could use to wedge under or otherwise manipulate the fence tie aside from his fingers, Raph was making progress on it. Raph was quite strong, dexterous and stubborn under optimal conditions. Even in his current state, those traits were not entirely eliminated. Though everything but his dogged persistence had taken a heavy hit in recent days, he was still stronger than he might have been had he been other than what he was.

The effort had left his fingers bloodied, but he was cold enough that he didn't really feel it, and he wouldn't have cared if he had. He only found the blood to be a nuisance because it made things slippery and hard to grasp firmly. It would have cut him to the core to see one of his brothers bleed, but the sight of his own blood had virtually no effect on him.

Spot had at first watched sullenly, but with quickening interest as he saw that Raph was actually making progress. He puffed his whiskers out and turned his ears forward, staring intently at what Raph was doing as if the intensity of his observation somehow aided Raph's endeavors.

The lizard was ignoring them, but Raph could feel the wolfdog's eyes watch him, even with his back to her. Any activity to do with the fence interested her, for the same reason it interested Raph.

At long last, the tie was loose enough that Raph could get his fingers around it to give it a really good yank. It wasn't easy to pull the heavy wire clear of the gate frame, but Raph was strong enough to do it. He then pushed at the mesh, and was satisfied by a tiny gap that opened between wire mesh and gate frame. It wasn't big enough for even Spot to get through, but it was a start.

More importantly, Raph now had two tools he could use. If he could push the mesh out enough to deform the other ties so he could slip the one he'd removed through them, that gave him something to pull on, without having to spend hours just trying to wiggle them loose.

Another forty-five minutes saw a second tie removed, and fifteen minutes after that, Raph had a big enough hole for him to slip through, which he did without hesitation. The edges of the mesh scraped at his shell, but did no damage; the hole was just big enough.

Spot sat and watched, turning back one ear.

"Well? Are you comin' or what?" Raph asked.

"So you're in the big pen. Big deal. How are you gonna get over that fence?" Spot swung his head to the side, and Raph followed his gaze, for the first time realizing where he'd gotten to.

Unlike the front gate, this side gate led into a secondary enclosure, larger than the one Raph had been kept in, and without a roof. It connected to another pen like the one Raph had broken out of several yards down. The fence that made the larger enclosure was eight feet high, with an extra foot of inwardly leaning barbed wire at the top. The base of it was secured in the same fashion as the pen Raph had gotten out of. It was annoying to have worked so hard, only to be confronted with yet another fence. But annoying was all it was.

The mesh of this fence had larger openings, making it easier to climb. Raph could scale eight feet easy. The barbed wire was a bit more of a challenge, but he figured he could climb up to it, hang onto the fence with his hands, push off with his feet, let go at the right time, and flip himself over that last foot of fencing. Normally it wouldn't even be a particularly difficult move for him. Now he just hoped he had enough left in him to accomplish it.

Watching him start to climb the fence after a short rest, Spot said, "You are completely psychotic. You know that, don't you? I can't be the first one to tell you that. You get up to that barbed wire and then what? Tear yourself to shreds getting over it, that's what. So then you're outside the fence, assuming you don't just get stuck in it, bleeding out. How's that an improvement? Hey, are you listening?"

Raph didn't have breath to spare on the cat's endless objections to his escape attempts. He hadn't rested quite as long as he should have, and climbing was extraordinarily difficult. All his joints were stiff and numb with cold, his fingers were tired from working to get through the gate, his bitten arm trembled when asked to support his weight, and his shot leg was still wholly incapable of doing even that.

But he made it up the fence, and carefully positioned himself, bracing against the mesh. He had to push off with only one leg, but that went off without a hitch. Raph had flipped enough times that he knew he hadn't pushed off hard enough, so he didn't let go. He let gravity bring him back, and kicked off a second time. That time felt right, and he let go, executing a peculiar offshoot of a back-flip over the fencing. It worked. Right up until the lock on his collar got caught by a barb.

"Raphael!" he heard Spot practically squeal, right before his full weight came down on that collar, choking him and threatening to break his neck.

Panic shot through him like a bolt of lightning, and Raph flailed, kicked, thrashed without thought or intention of any sort for an indeterminate amount of time. Fear had hold of him, and in its grip he was sure he would die, hanging from the fence by his neck. All that remained was the instinct to fight back, though it did more harm than good.

The collar was stuck fast on the wire, keeping him a good four feet off the ground. He had landed with his back to the fencing, making grabbing onto the mesh an unnatural maneuver that required more than just reflex to accomplish. Reflex made him grab at the collar, at the wire, at anything in between. He didn't feel when the barbs cut into his arms, didn't notice when the blood ran.

But after a couple of wasted seconds, he got hold of himself.

Reaching behind him, Raph was able to grab onto the fence with his hands. He attempted to climb the fence from that awkward position, but it wasn't possible. All he could do was push himself up enough to relieve the pressure on his neck, not actually unhook the collar. And he could barely do that. He wouldn't be able to hold himself up very long that way. Once his strength gave out, he'd choke.

But Spot had come through the gate, and scrambled up the fence as fast as he could go.

"Raphael, listen to me. You've got to push up. Push up, as much as you can. I'll try to get you unstuck. But you've got to give me a little slack in the barbed wire. There's too much tension. Push up. Climb if you can. Are you listening to me? Push up!"

Raph couldn't have answered Spot if he'd wanted to. It was all he could do to hold on to the blood slicked wire with his arms twisted behind him as they were. Pushing up brought the risk of slipping, and losing his grip entirely. But he tried.

"That's it! That's it! Stay there, stay there!" Spot meowed excitedly.

Raph could neither see nor feel what Spot was doing behind his head, and could only assume the cat was making good use of those mutant thumbs he'd been given. The blood running down Raph's arms coated the wire, making his hold on it more treacherous by the second. His arms were trembling with the effort, and he felt more than saw the blackness encroaching on his vision, telling him he didn't have enough oxygen in his system to do this. He was going to black out. And then he'd be done for.

It felt like he'd been hanging there for a thousand years, but he was pretty sure it was just a matter of seconds, probably not even a minute. Abruptly, one of his hands slipped, which compromised his grip with the other. Raph's body jerked down hard, and his throat slammed against the leather collar with bruising force. He heard Spot yowl loudly. But then, miraculously, Raph was falling, the collar was free of the barbed wire. He dropped the few feet to the ground, collapsing in a limp heap.

He didn't know how long he lay there, but by the time he became aware of his surroundings again, Spot had come over the fence and joined him, was furiously rubbing his head against Raph's face in the manner common to cats when they show affection. There was a slash down Spot's right foreleg, where the barbed wire had cut him. But he'd managed to pry the collar almost free of the barbed wire, and Raph's weight had done the rest. Spot himself was small enough that it was a simple matter for him to slip under the wire and down the fence to reach Raph.

"You big, dumb idiot," Spot was saying, but he was purring loudly as he did so, "You suicidal moron," he continued affectionately, "You stupid, reptile-brained doofus."

"Alright, alright, enough already," Raph managed to croak hoarsely, the words barely audible, "The job's not finished. We've still got to get out of here."

"You can barely talk, let alone stand," Spot informed him, backing off and sitting down to inspect the damage to his own limb, "And this is the wilderness, pal. Just where do you think you're going to go?" he began to wash the slash wound with his tongue.

"Home," Raph replied simply.

He couldn't voice the entirety of his plan and purpose. He needed to go home. He needed to find his brothers. He needed to heal. And he needed Leo to form a plan of action to free the animals here, and make sure this hellhole was shut down for good and all. He couldn't say it. Could barely think it. He was too tired, and in too much pain. He just needed to get to his brothers, to Leo. Leo would have a plan for how to fix all this. Leo _always_ had a plan.

"Home?" Spot scoffed, looking up from licking the gash in his leg, "NYC's a long, long way from here. You don't even know how far. We've got snow rollin' in. You're all cut to ribbons, and you want to become a mutant on the lam. You'll _die_!"

"Nobody says you have to come," Raph told him, struggling to sit up, and failing, only dimly aware of the blood streaked along his arms, blood which was dripping to the ground under him.

"Good, 'cause I'm not," Spot retorted, "I may be next Friday's dinner in that monkey cage, but you're a completely obsessive wacko, and that ain't healthy to be around."

"I've been called worse," Raph said, finally managing to get his legs under him.

Spot sighed, and stared at him widely, "You're really gonna do it, aren't you? You're gonna wander out into the forest, and hope to bumble your way home on nothing but iron will."

Shakily getting to his feet, using the fence for support as well as balance, Raph was unable to answer for a moment. His head was spinning, and he had trouble getting his breath, which came in painful and shallow bursts.

Then he said, "I haven't got a choice. My brothers need me. I gotta go home."

Spot gazed up at him, fear, awe, and something akin to envy in his gaze.

"That's some kinda love, Raphael," Spot twitched his tail, took a breath, "I get this feeling like you know the risks out there. And... you'd take all that on... just for love," he shook himself and regained his composure, "But it's _still_ crazy. And you _will_ die out there."

Raph would not have put it in such a sappy, sentimental kind of way... but Spot wasn't wrong about why he was doing this. However, a return of oxygen to the brain had slowed him down a little, and he had a new plan that didn't involve leaving yet, just getting out of sight.

The key to any successful ninja vanish trick was that your enemy looked in the wrong direction. It wasn't enough just to throw a smoke bomb. You had to move, and not in the direction your enemy expected. Sometimes you just side stepped into a shadow, and waited for them to leave the area first because they assumed that you had gone farther.

In addition to all the pens, there was a barn on this property, and the house to consider. Spot was right, without any gear and no real idea where he was, Raph would be dead long before he found his way back home. There had to be something on the property that he could use to help himself.

So long as he kept out of sight, he should be safe enough, because no one expected him to get out, and they certainly wouldn't expect him to stay nearby if he had. His ideal would be for whoever was in the house to eventually discover his escape, and leave the property altogether to look for him. Who knew what he might find around the property? Some means of contacting his brothers, like a phone or a computer with internet access maybe? Or maybe a vehicle he could use? Raph wasn't a particularly qualified driver at the moment, but desperate times and all that.

What he needed most immediately however, was to get warm. Right now he was too cold to even think about things like food or water, or a first aid kit. In fact, now he had the opportunity to look for shelter and finally realized it, all other considerations were shunted aside.

He pushed off the fence, and staggered in the direction of the barn.

"Hey, the road's that way," Spot called after him, "Hey, where are you going now? You want all this to be for nothing? You go that way, you're gonna get caught and locked up again. And next time you might not have such friendly roommates!"

Raphael ignored him. He was getting quite used to doing that. As before, Spot refused to follow him, and simply sat, watching Raph limp towards the barn.

The cat really didn't seem to believe there was anything worth escaping for. He knew the world outside, and was so afraid of it that he would rather stay in a pen, living a pointless existence which must eventually end with starvation or illness or being eaten by the animals in there with him.

But Raph couldn't deal with Spot's problems right now. He was struggling just to cope with his own issues, which seemed to be piling up faster than he could resolve them. At least now he was out of the pen. At least now he had a fighting chance to survive. At least now, he could try to find his brothers.


	14. Chapter 14

**Part 2 - Free  
**_"If I could change, I would; take back the pain, I would/  
Retrace every wrong move that I made, I would/  
__If I could stand up and take the blame, I would"  
_**_-Easier to Run _(Linkin Park)**

* * *

"Leo, we're lost, aren't we?"

For a second, Leo thought there was a double meaning to Donnie's question. But when he looked back, he saw that Don was looking over Mikey's shoulder at the map and shaking his head. Leo pulled to the side of the road with a sigh, and climbed back to look at the map too.

All the turtles had an impeccable sense of direction. Though Mikey couldn't even read a compass, he could undoubtedly have gotten out of the Shellraiser and oriented himself so that he was facing directly at the lair. Any one of them could. Leo had never tried to explain it to himself or anyone else why that was so. Simply put, they could just _feel_ the direction their home was in.

To a lesser degree, they could figure out the direction of almost any other location they were vaguely familiar with by feel. That was fine when they were running rooftops and could simply hop a building if it was in their way. And of course they had explored the sewer system so thoroughly that they didn't even need a directional sense to navigate down there.

But with the Shellraiser on the street, it had suddenly proven to be a different story. The streets never seemed to quite line up the way that Leo expected them to, and it was evident that either Donnie could not read a map or that New York didn't look like the map in the Shellraiser computer system. Either way, they always had trouble finding their way to mutagen canisters, and not just because Donnie's mutagen detection device was flaky (though there was that too).

Now, a long way from home, they found everything unfamiliar. Nothing looked right. Roads branched off and Leo didn't know whether to get on one of the branches or stay on the main road. The closer they got to their destination, the less sure he became. Mikey's navigation instructions had become so incomprehensible that Don had taken over. They were all feeling pent up in the van, anxious to get to their destination, worried about being so far from home, scared they wouldn't find their brother. It was working on all of their nerves. Donnie was merely expressing what they were all feeling at this point.

But Leo couldn't admit to his own doubts. He was the leader, the others were looking to him for reassurance and direction. So he lifted his head slightly, and quietly cleared his throat.

"No, we're not lost," Leo said confidently, then wavered slightly, "I just... I'm not sure... exactly... where we are. But... _but_ that's okay, because... um... well, we're almost there."

"Leo, how can you possibly know that if you don't know where we are?" Donnie asked critically.

"I... uh... well..." Leo bit his lower lip, avoided looking at Donnie and shrugged in what he hoped was a casual manner, "I just..." he never had to finish the sentence, because Donnie's computer dinged.

"Laurenson's got another post up," Donnie reported, supplementing this after reading for a few seconds with, "Oh no."

"Now what?" Leo asked, trying to keep the panicky edge out of his voice.

Ever since he'd seen the pictures of those dogs, his mind had been filled with images of horror that he couldn't get out of his head. He still didn't know where or how Raph was being kept, or what condition he was in, but he now knew how this so-called doctor cared -or rather failed to care- for his captive research subjects. Leo's imagination had run riot with that information, clouding his thoughts with renewed fear for his brother's life.

"'Despite precautions,'" Donnie said, reading the post aloud with a shaky voice, "'Red found a weakness in the fencing and escaped, injuring himself and another animal in the process. I have called in a team to search for him. Hopefully he can be darted and recaptured. But... for the safety of people living in the area, it may be necessary to...'" he choked, unable to finish the sentence.

Mikey didn't get it, "To what? Raph's not gonna hurt anybody. Not unless they try to hurt him first. He wouldn't. Donnie, what are they gonna do to him?"

Don simply looked down, and didn't answer. His silence seemed to be enough of an answer for Mikey, who actually paled slightly, eyes wide in shock.

"No," Mikey declared after a moment, scowling, "No, they _can't_. Leo, tell him they can't do that!"

"Mikey," Donnie shook his head, struggling to meet his brother's eyes, "If we don't find Raph first, I'm afraid they'll be able to do whatever they want."

"That won't happen," Leo said firmly, glancing at his brothers in the rear view mirror, "Raph won't let it. He's smart, and he knows what he's up against, maybe better than we do. He'll keep clear of them."

Mikey and Donnie didn't say anything aloud, but exchanged a glance which said exactly what Leo was thinking. Since when had their brother ever had sense enough to avoid a fight?

* * *

Raphael's brothers might have been more worried if they'd known that fighting was the last thing on his mind right now, because of what that said about his physical and mental state. Every fiber of his being had been focused on getting out of the pen. That goal accomplished, he sort of lost his sense of direction. His head wouldn't stay clear long enough for him to finish a train of thought.

Though the barn was not conditioned, it was fairly well closed off to the elements, and there was hay piled in corners and stalls. Raph couldn't make a meal of hay, but he could use it as a place to lie down for a little that was dry and relatively warm. Intending only to rest for a moment, regain some warmth and energy, Raph was not later certain if he had slept or lost consciousness. By the time he came to, the place was in an uproar, because his escape had been discovered.

Noise filtered through the walls of the barn, but Raph listened to it with a kind of detachment. He knew that there were people looking for him, he could hear boots crunching on gravel and people shouting to one another. He also knew that he could expect a repeat of his initial capture if he was found, complete with darting and a return to a cage. He knew that the barn would likely be searched eventually.

But the near-choking had taken more out of him than he'd realized at the time. Now the panic adrenalin had burned itself out, he was left just feeling shaky and deflated. Now he'd gone down, he didn't feel like getting up. Despite his earlier speech to Spot, and the conviction that had carried him so far, he felt almost too tired to care now, and his inability to think made planning how he was going to keep clear of the people hunting him impossible. If he couldn't think of what to do, it seemed like there wasn't any real point in getting up.

Spot had already been recaptured, but Raph didn't think he'd been put back in the pen Raph had escaped from. There was persistent activity near it, and when the voices were loud enough for him to make out their words, it sounded like they were looking for how he'd gotten out, and watching to make sure the other animal didn't get out.

It took some time for Raph's foggy brain to process the singular term. More snippets told him that the wolfdog had gotten out of the pen, and they couldn't find her. Raph didn't think that she could have gotten over the fence the way he had. She was too big to fit between the strands of barbed wire at the top like Spot had, and didn't have hands to swing herself over like Raph did. She had to be in that larger enclosure. All the searchers seemed to agree, and they weren't looking too strenuously for her. They were more concerned about Raph, because they were certain he'd gotten out of the larger pen.

Apparently the lizard had remained exactly where he was. Possibly he knew he couldn't climb the fence. Possibly he was too cold to try. Possibly, like Spot, he had simply given up the idea of escape.

Hearing footsteps coming his way activated a reflex in Raph, one trained into him since he was very small. Though he couldn't have run if he'd tried, and couldn't actually think of what to do, Raph went back to some of his earliest training without being conscious of it. Splinter had known that his sons needed to stay invisible in the shadows, and that one day they might be hunted and feared. He had trained them to stay hidden, to use whatever was available as cover.

Raph dug into the hay, pushing his way under it and even digging a little into the dirt floor of the barn, disappearing completely from view, and then lying perfectly still, waiting and watching.

That had been the ultimate purpose behind Splinter's having his boys perform exercises over and over. So that, when the time came, they would be able to act even if there was no time to think, or if they were pushed beyond the usual limits of endurance. The training was so deeply ingrained that they could hide or fight to defend their lives with no advance warning, regardless of what else was going on. Doing so with forethought would always be better than acting on instinct, but sometimes instinct was all there was left, and sometimes there was no time for thinking.

And Raph's instincts had always been very strong, particularly his instinct to fight when he felt threatened. Sometimes he had difficulty separating emotional threats from physical ones, which served to make him unpredictable and even dangerous at times, especially as his instinct to flee in the face of danger was severely underdeveloped, despite Splinter's attempts to teach him the virtues of discretion. In this instance, however, he was too weak to fight.

So long as the men didn't find where he was hiding, Raph had no inclination towards a violent response. If they caught him and tried to pen him up again however, all bets were off.

Fortunately, the men looking through the barn weren't terribly thorough about their job. They looked into each stall, and rattled the gates on the stalls in an attempt to startle anything in them out of hiding, but they didn't go looking under the hay. They didn't think it was piled deep enough to conceal something the size of Raph. They also didn't really seem to think he had gone into the barn.

Peering through the hay, Raph got a glimpse of the guns they were carrying. He couldn't be sure, not being any expert on guns (well, not the kind that humans tended to carry), but he didn't think those were loaded with darts. That changed the landscape of things considerably. It was one thing to give in to capture, knowing he'd have another chance at escape. It was quite another to let himself be caught if they had decided that he was too dangerous or inconvenient to keep and intended to kill him.

Raph watched the two men go, knowing they would eventually be back. A general search of the area would be followed by something more thorough if they didn't find any signs of his having left. These people had been competent enough to catch him, they would be competent enough to find him if he did nothing to thwart their efforts or vacate the premises.

It was enough for Raph to gather what little strength he had left, though it seemed his only option at this point was to run, to get as far away as he could as fast as he could. All things considered, that wasn't likely to be very far or very fast. But he intended to do whatever he had to, until he wasn't able to do anything more.

* * *

"You're sure this is the right area?" Leo inquired.

"Positive," Donnie replied, "I just don't know... exactly where."

The sky was thick with clouds. A few stray snowflakes were making their escape towards Earth, only to be snatched up by a chill wind which tossed them through the air. It was still early, but rapidly getting dark. The days were short at this time of year, especially this far north.

After much arguing, Donnie had taken over the driving, and had brought them to an area where the roads branched off without street signs, and driveways composed of anything from asphalt to dirt to gravel stretched away out of sight, some marked by mailboxes which seemed not to have any number on them, and some lacking mailbox and driveway altogether. They were looking at a lot of square miles of real estate, and the last thing Leo wanted was to deploy his brothers out into this unfamiliar area, especially in daylight, and with the temperature plunged below freezing.

But there was a lot of land they couldn't see from the road, due to distance and trees, among other things. Leo had a tendency to listen to his head and his heart rather than his gut, his reason and feelings rather than his instincts, but right now they were all telling him that time was short.

There had been no further blog updating, which Leo had to assume meant Raph had so far evaded capture. But that wasn't necessarily a good thing. If he got away, Raph could go anywhere. Leo knew that he would orient himself and head for home, but not only was it likely impossible for him to make a beeline for it, not knowing the precise spot he started from meant that they couldn't draw a straight line on a map from point A to point B and look for him along that line. They could miss him by inches or miles. And the longer he was running loose, the less they would be able to predict what he was doing or where he was. If Raph was recaptured, things could be even more dire, as he might very shortly thereafter be dead. Leo wasn't sure whether to hope Raph got away or was caught. If it was the former, there might be nothing his brothers could do to find him, and he would be on his own. If it was the latter, they might find him, but possibly too late to help him.

"Okay, let's find somewhere to park the Shellraiser," Leo decided, "Then we'll split up and search the area. Be sure to keep your T-phones on you. Full ninja mode. Do _not_ let anyone see you or hear you."

Not everything along the road was fenced, and it was a small matter for Donnie to find a place where he could drive the Shellraiser off the road and park it behind some trees and bushes so that it was screened from view. After that, Leo decided who was going in which direction.

"Everybody remember where we parked. And keep in touch."

Leo was uncomfortably aware that he was endangering the lives of his entire family, just on the thread thin hope of being able to save one single member of the same. But he saw in the eyes of his brothers that they would have it no other way. Long ago, it had been decided among them that they would live and train with each other, fight alongside each other, and -if necessary- die together for what they believed in. That was how they would spend their existence, no matter what happened or where fate took them.


	15. Chapter 15

Leo didn't have to worry about the light for long. The clouds, combined with early sunset, turned the world dusky before he'd been out fifteen minutes. The swirling snowflakes were somewhat more numerous, breaking up shapes and concealing the form of objects and living things alike. For Leo, that made exploration more difficult, especially as he wasn't used to this semi-natural setting, but it also meant he was unlikely to be spotted, and even less likely to be identified.

Still, he kept his guard up, and stayed in the shadows provided by brush and trees as much as possible. At first he found only farmhouses, barns and pastures for animals or fields for crops (he didn't really know how to tell the difference), and properties that simply ran wild. None of them looked like what little he'd seen of Laurenson's property in the photographs (which had primarily been of the animals rather than the surroundings) and so none of them seemed to bear close inspection.

Donnie and Mikey checked in often, revealing that they had also found nothing of interest. They were covering a lot of terrain that was foreign to them, and so far had accomplished little. Leo was beginning to wonder if maybe they were approaching things from the wrong angle, when suddenly he heard a strange noise up ahead. It sounded uncannily like an animal, but not one he could recognize.

Leo of course didn't have much experience with the sorts of animals you might find in the country. No matter how much he liked to imagine he'd be great in the wilderness, being in touch with nature and all, he was a city turtle, born and raised. His present surroundings made him uneasy because he didn't know them well enough to tell what was normal and safe, and what wasn't.

He'd heard several animals out here though, none like the sound this thing made. There was something... unnatural about it, yet it felt more familiar to Leo than any of the other sounds he'd heard out here, which somehow made him more uneasy than anything because he certainly didn't know what animal had made the sound. It was eery, and he didn't like this feeling of a known unknown.

Of course he had to investigate. He climbed over several fences, eventually finding himself on a property that seemed more than merely wild, it seemed as if it had been intentionally planted to make sure the trees and brush were thick, and concealed the heart of the property from view on all sides.

Stealthy as he was, Leo could not fool a doe lying in some bracken, though he was very close to her before she suddenly sprang up in alarm and bounded away. Once he'd startled one wild animal, it was like a chain reaction. He was suddenly surrounded by scuttling, scurrying, flapping fleeing sounds, accompanied by a variety of alarm calls ranging from snorts to shrieks.

He waited, frozen where he was, until the racket died down. Then he continued forward.

Eventually, he stumbled abruptly into the open of a gravel drive, screened on either side by brush and trees and patches of thorns, some of which Leo had encountered and scratched himself on earlier.

Deciding that a drive generally led somewhere, he decided to follow along the edge of it, keeping close to the brush so that he could disappear at a moment's notice if the shadows weren't enough to conceal him, and assuming anyone came along suddenly.

As if to urge him along, the wind kicked up, and the smattering of snowflakes swirled chaotically around him. It surely had to be a coincidence, but it seemed as if the wind was blowing at his back, driving him along the road, towards the source of the familiar yet unknown sound.

At the end of the drive, Leo found first a large house, with all its lights on but nobody around. He decided to skirt around it, and ran almost directly into a sight which shocked and sickened him.

Row after row of muddy, thick-gauge wire mesh pens, each with multiple creatures in poor physical condition, most with little or no shelter from the elements, no sign of any water inside the pen, the majority standing in their own filth. At first, Leo simply froze where he was, unable to believe what he was seeing, not even taking in the fact that some seventy percent of the animals were mutants. It was the voice of a mutant that had drawn him.

The animals seemed not to regard him as anything terribly interesting, and only a few watched him or made noise in response to his presence. Even so, he faded back to the shadows as soon as he'd recovered his wits, so as not to advertise his presence.

From this position, he had to take a moment to absorb the conditions of the animals. All were thin, many with thick hair were matted, a lot of them had wounds of one sort or another.

The most horrific part of it for Leo was knowing that his brother had likely been held in just such an enclosure. Leo didn't know a whole lot about most animals, but he knew that everything else about the living conditions was appalling and unsuitable for _anything_ living, much less his own brother. Leo felt sick, and angry, and more afraid for Raph than ever.

He called Donnie and Mikey, letting them know that he was pretty sure he'd found what they were looking for, but so far hadn't seen Raph or any people around. It would be some minutes before his brothers arrived. They would retrace their steps to the Shellraiser, and bring it closer to the location, and only then would they be joining Leo. In the meantime, he had to get hold of himself.

Eventually, Leo managed to force himself to start checking the pens, and make sure his brother hadn't been recaptured. It was hard to look into the pens, and see the creatures within for whom he could do nothing for the moment.

Something would have to be done. Leo's soft heart went out to every penned creature. But he needed to find Raph, and needed to figure out how to handle this situation. He knew he wouldn't be able to force himself to leave these animals without doing something for them. But he also knew that committing to action without thinking or properly assessing the situation could do more harm than good.

A voice startled him, saying, "Hey, I thought you were gettin' outta here. If you keep hanging around, those guys are gonna find you, no two ways about it."

Leo whirled, and spotted an animal carrier set on the hood of a van parked in back of the house near the barn. A pair of luminous eyes peered through the wire door at him, and he realized that was the source of the voice, though he couldn't at first tell what sort of creature was in the carrier.

The owner of the voice was apparently equally surprised, for he said, "Hey, you're not Raphael. Who are you? And why aren't you locked up where you belong?"

"You know my brother?" Leo asked, approaching the animal carrier, his surprise momentarily causing him to drop his guard, "Where is he?"

"Brother, eh? He said somethin' about brothers," the creature replied, only indirectly answering Leo's first question, and apparently ignoring the second entirely.

Looking through the wires of the crate door, Leo saw that he was being addressed by... well, he thought it might have been a cat, but it was rather odd looking, pitifully thin and scruffy. The creature was also covered in fresh blood, though Leo couldn't make out where it had been injured.

"To hear him tell it, you guys are really somethin'," the cat said, blinking his large eyes slowly, "But you just look like another mutant turtle to me. Then again, I've only ever seen the one."

Though he'd never messed with an animal carrier before, Leo figured out how to unlock the door of the crate without much difficulty. The cat acted as if he didn't know the door had been opened, and merely sat there, looking at him, as if Leo were some mystery to be solved.

But before the cat could say anything further, Leo had the unaccountable feeling of being watched by someone or something that hadn't been watching him a moment before. He looked around sharply, but saw nothing besides the caged animals. Nonetheless, he started to crouch down, to use the van as cover.

This movement saved his life. A bullet meant for his head winged harmlessly past him, and thudded heavily into the gravel some distance away. Immediately, Leo began to move around in front of the van, so it would be between him and the direction the shot had come from, but a second bullet seared its way across his arm, and the impact spun him away from the van and knocked him down, leaving him completely exposed, giving the shooter a clear target to aim for.

He cringed, waiting for the bullet that would end his life. But the expected shot never came.

Instead, the cat jumped down from the van and took an exploratory lick at Leo's face. The cat wrinkled his nose, evidently not caring much for turtle. Still rather stunned, Leo simply stared at the cat for a lengthy moment, before realizing that there was a lot of noise going on several feet away.

The area in front of the pens was a mixture of mud and gravel, but just beyond that the tall brush took over. It was from this concealed position that the shooter had attacked Leo. But it sounded like something had tackled him and was giving him a taste of his own medicine.

Leo got up hesitantly, surprised by the lightheadedness he felt, considering that the injury was to his arm and not his head. He put a hand over the wound to stifle the bleeding, wincing as he did so and approached the bush with some caution.

Caution that appeared to have been warranted as a large, mud-covered creature suddenly launched out from the bushes, though Leo couldn't tell immediately if it had been kicked or had leaped out on its own because it landed crouched but upright, digging into the gravel as it slid back, turned towards the brush from whence it had come, alert and watchful. And growling.

What Leo could tell immediately, or after a moment of shock which rendered him unable to think passed, was that it wasn't just _any_ creature he was looking at. It was Raphael.

Blinking, trying to find his tongue, trying to assess his brother's condition under all that mud, dozens of questions all clamoring to be asked at once, Leo finally managed to say, "Raph, you're a mess."

"Nice to see you too," Raph retorted, his voice quiet and hoarse, but reassuringly fierce.

"I didn't mean it how it sounded," Leo said, but Raph did not so much as glance back at him.

Having regained his bearings somewhat, Leo drew a katana in preparation for a fight, but apparently their opponent had had enough of turtles for one evening. A series of cracking, crunching sounds coupled with several swears neither of them had heard before denoted a hurried departure.

As soon as he was sure the fight was over, one of Raph's legs folded under him, and he all but fell over before Leo could rush to his side. Leo couldn't be sure how bad the damage was in the dark, especially with the mud his brother was covered in, but he knew it was bad that Raph was unable to keep his feet under him. Also bad, though not surprising, was how cold his brother was to the touch. A little more surprising and distressing was how readily Raph allowed Leo to support his weight, and how violently he was shivering.

"We've gotta get you out of here," Leo said, realizing he was stating the obvious, but hoping that his tone of voice would be somewhat reassuring.

Raph had closed his eyes when he fell, but he slid one open to look sidelong at Leo, a hint of his usually fiery temperament burning in the vibrant green of his eye.

"Figured that all by yourself did you?" Raph asked, but there was a touch of humor to his tone, though it was overshadowed by a profound exhaustion and pain that cut Leo to the core to hear.

"I'm smart like that," Leo replied, then continued, "Think you can stand if I help you?"

"I could stand when you didn't," Raph said, though he didn't at first make any attempt to move.

"Yeah, right up until the point where you fell down," Leo reminded him.

Raph merely grunted at this, gathered himself and struggled to his feet. Leo put one of Raph's arms over his shoulder, holding to his brother's arm with one hand, while using the other to hold onto the edge of Raph's shell. So he wouldn't pull on something and do more harm than good, Leo let Raph work his way up on his own, simply holding him up once he was there and aiding his balance. It was instantly obvious that Raph sorely needed that help, and Leo wondered how he had ever managed to tackle the gunman unaided in the first place.

Once Raph seemed to have his footing, Leo looked over his shoulder at the cat, who had not moved since checking on Leo after he fell. The cat sat there, and blinked owlishly at him.

"Forget it, Leo," Raph advised quietly, "Spot won't come."

Leo was reluctant to do as Raph told him, but the plain and simple reality was that he couldn't exactly force the cat to come with them, and the animal seemed disinclined to follow them on its own.

As they began to make limping progress up the edge of the drive, Leo keeping alert for any signs of more men with guns so they could duck into the brush before they were noticed, a question occurred to him. He tried to find the answer on his own for a couple of minutes, then gave up.

"Say, Raph?" Leo began.

"Yeah?"

"You got loose hours ago, right?"

Raph turned his head slightly, looking at his brother quizzically, "Yeah, so?"

"So... why are you still here?" Leo asked.

"I dunno," Raph replied, apparently honestly baffled, "I just sorta... kept feelin' like there was somethin' I needed to go back for."

"You still feel that way?" Leo asked, theorizing to himself that Raph felt as much for those caged animals as he himself did.

Raph didn't answer for a moment, looking thoughtful. Finally, he shook his head slowly, an action he appeared to regret as it drew a painful hiss from him.

"No," he answered flatly, "No, I don't feel it anymore."

Leo felt a chill of his own that had nothing to do with the snow in the air. Raph couldn't have known Leo was there, much less that he would be in danger. But what other explanation was there? For what other possible reason would his brother have stayed near what felt like the gates of Hell?


	16. Chapter 16

Things felt even stranger to Leo once he and Raph joined up with their brothers in the Shellraiser.

Before attempting to evaluate Raph's condition in detail, Leo insisted on driving almost half an hour and then parking somewhere out of sight. Leo drove, while Donnie and Mikey sat in the back with Raph, who sat on the floor, too weak to make the effort to get into an actual seat. Donnie and Mikey seemed almost afraid to touch him, as if avoiding doing so would keep what they could already see of their brother's condition from being real.

Raph didn't even appear to have the energy to resent their looks of worry and pity, sitting propped against the back doors of the Shellraiser, his eyes mostly closed, his shivering refusing to subside.

Only after Leo had parked the Shellraiser, climbed into the back and started to try and scrape off some of the mud coating his brother from head to foot did he discover the collar. Raph had been sitting absolutely motionless, but he flinched when Leo touched the collar, and yelped. Leo recoiled at once, in part because he was afraid of hurting his brother, but primarily because he recognized the sensation. He'd felt that leather collar before. Only... only he'd convinced himself it had been merely a dream.

"Leo!" Mikey rebuked, crouching at Raph's side.

"Raph, I'm sorry," Leo said, the words tumbling over each other, "I didn't mean-"

Raph cut him off sharply, hissing through his teeth, "It's fine. Just get the damned thing off me."

"I barely touched it," Leo began to protest, "To actually get it off-"

Raph interrupted again, "Just get it off of me," he looked directly at Leo, and the blue-masked turtle winced sympathetically at the world of pain he saw in his brother's gaze, "Leo, _please_."

With grave reluctance, Leo nodded. He returned to Raph's side, this time examining the collar by touching Raph's head to encourage his brother to move so he could see the collar in the light. Raph obliged, leaning his head to the side. It clearly still hurt him, but he made no further sounds.

"No way you're getting through that lock with the stuff we've got here without doing more damage than has already been done," Donnie observed, trying (and failing) to keep the tremor out of his voice, "Your best bet is to cut through the collar itself. But..." he didn't finish the sentence.

He didn't have to. Raph just looked at Leo, silently pleading. Leo nodded decisively, and pulled one of his smaller knives from its concealed sheath.

"This is going to hurt," Leo warned.

"Just do it," Raph said, which was his way of reassuring Leo that this was what he wanted, and he was willing to take any pain that came with it.

* * *

Though Raph was prepared to grit his teeth and bear the pain until the collar was off, no matter how long it took, Leo periodically insisted on taking a break, though it was unclear if it was for his own benefit or for Raph's. The leather was thick, and Leo had to be careful to avoid cutting into turtle instead of collar, which was rendered even more difficult by the fact that he was clearly afraid to touch the collar any more than necessary, and it was coated with mud, making it hard to hold steady. It was all the harder for Leo because he knew that every shift of it sent lightning bolts of agony through Raph, who expressed this only by his shaking growing worse.

During breaks, Leo attempted to describe what he'd seen to the others, while Mikey tried to entice Raph to eat or drink something. Tired, sore and sick to his stomach with pain, Raph had no interest in taking anything in, even to appease Mikey, who was doggedly persistent about the matter of water.

Failing at getting Raph to take anything in, Mikey resigned himself to using a wet cloth to wipe the mud off Raph, though mostly off Raph's shell as he rapidly discovered that there was hardly another place on his brother he could touch without eliciting some form of pain response. Shell cleaning wasn't particularly useful, but it kept him busy, and Raph was surprised about how soothing it actually was.

It took maybe half an hour in all, but it seemed an eternity to all involved. But, at long last, the collar came loose. Leo had been holding it steady with one hand, while using the other to wield the knife he was using to cut it, but the collar was slick with blood and, when he cut the last bit holding it together, it slipped from his hand and fell on the floor of the Shellraiser with a clatter.

It was like yanking off a band-aid, only worse because the skin underneath wasn't healthy, but bruised and rubbed raw. Raph gasped and started to fall forward, but Leo and Mikey caught him, and he leaned into their support, and waiting for the light to stop seeming too bright and the van's interior to stop wobbling. Even though the collar had not actually been too tight around his neck, it had felt like it was choking him, smothering him, and slowly driving him nuts.

The collar was coated with fresh and dried blood aside from the other grime, and looked like it belonged in some kind of torture chamber in a horror movie. Raph looked away from it quickly, hating the sight of it almost as much as he'd despised the feel of it on his neck. Despite the pain of exposing raw and wounded flesh to the air, the relief Raph felt was immense.

"Oh Raph..." Donnie gasped softly.

He had been sitting back out of the way, giving Leo room to work, and so he was the first to really see the extent of what the collar had done to Raph's neck. Because the collar had partially kept the mud off, the wounds on his neck were more visible than the ones anywhere else.

Raph himself didn't know how badly injured he was, but he did know that as he'd gotten warmer and feeling had gradually returned, it seemed like everything hurt. His neck in particular ached, but also burned like fire. From the look in Donnie's eyes as he looked from Raph to Leo, it was pretty bad.

Leo's only comment was a sharp intake of breath. Mikey whimpered a little.

"Thanks," Raph wheezed when he could finally get his breath.

"No problem," Leo replied in a voice that was far gentler than Raph ever remembered him using.

It was clear that his brothers were a great deal more distressed by the injuries they could see than Raph himself was. He wasn't sure if that was a bad thing, but he wished they'd stop looking so worried, and particularly that they'd quit looking guilty, as if there had been anything they could have done to prevent this. But mostly, he was just glad to be reunited with his brothers, that he was somewhere warm and -most especially- that he was free of that damnable collar.

Now Leo had gotten the collar off, it seemed to fall to Donnie to do the rest. Donnie was their thoroughly unofficially recognized field medic, though most typically they returned home on the rare occasions when they were injured and Splinter took care of them. But they were a long way from home. Raph still didn't know how far, and had neither the energy nor the inclination to ask, but he could feel that the distance was enormous.

Donnie's first action was to flush the affected area, both to clean out anything that might have gotten into the wound, as well as clearing mud and other debris away so he could see the actual extent of the damage that had been done.

Though Donnie warned him that it would sting, Raph still hissed when the liquid touched the open wound at the back, and ran down the sides of his neck.

Biting his lip and gazing at the floor, Raph became aware that the Shellraiser was a thorough mess of mud, gravel, blood and other bits of things like straw, twigs from brush and dead leaves, really anything Raph had gotten stuck to him. Being what they were and living in a sewer made the turtles rather ambivalent about cleanliness, but Raph was fairly certain this was the dirtiest the interior of the Shellraiser had ever been.

After initially flushing the wound, Donnie had Raph go down on his side, with Leo holding his head, so Donnie could get a better look at his throat. Naturally, the damage there was more severe. Not only had the collar rubbed until the skin blistered and bled, it had also caused bruising from when Raph had almost hung himself. Because none of them knew what Raph had been through, his brothers were unprepared for the sight, despite what they had already seen.

It was clear that they were getting more upset with each injury they found, though their emotions were getting more ambiguous as their sorrow and guilt met with anger and then got all tangled together and confused. Raph didn't have the energy to feel much emotion about anything, and the pain of getting the collar off and cleaning the injury to his neck kept him pretty much in the moment, so he found the emotions evident in the faces and voices of his brothers almost disconcerting and disconnected from anything. It made him a little uneasy, something Leo picked up on but seemed to misinterpret.

"Donnie, I think Raph's about had it for now. The rest can wait, can't it?"

Donnie looked about ready to argue, but one look at Leo seemed to tell him it wouldn't be worth it.

"Yeah, okay, Leo," Donnie said.

"Are we going home now?" Mikey asked hopefully.

Raph couldn't see because Leo was around behind him, but he felt his brother stiffen as he hesitated to answer the question. Raph knew why. Leo had seen the caged animals on the property, and his heart had gone out to them. The fact that so many of them were mutants likely even gave him a feeling of responsibility. It was possible that all of this had started with a stray mutagen canister, one that they had allowed to get away from them, which had subsequently been picked up and brought out here. It was possible that the turtles had indirectly brought this trouble on themselves, and the caged animals.

But it wasn't as simple as turning the animals loose. Even if the animals were set free, the man who had done this and the people who worked for him would simply do it all again. He'd caught Raph once, who was to say he wouldn't get Raph or another of the turtles again?

Something had to be done with regards to that, but Leo's silence said he hadn't yet decided what, or else didn't like the answer he'd come up with.

"I think we have to," Leo said finally, though he didn't sound content with that conclusion, "This is something new for us. We need to think, and Raph needs time to recover."

Raph heard what Leo didn't say. Leo wanted to talk to Master Splinter about this. Splinter knew so much about so many things, he might know what to do. But Leo didn't want to outright say that he didn't know what they should do, or that he didn't think they were going to figure it out on their own.

For once, Raph didn't feel up to calling him on it.

* * *

Though Raph refused to acknowledge it either way, Leo was sure that there were more injuries under all that mud that they hadn't seen. It looked at first glance that Raph had only been shot twice, and that those wounds had been at least superficially cared for and bandaged, it was clear Raph had sustained more damage than that. One of his arms clearly pained him in particular, and the shredded wrapping on his knuckles and wrists suggested torn skin as well, but he was too muddy to be sure.

But, however bad the damage was, it would wait for them to get home, where there would be more room to move, better lighting... and Splinter there to help them.

Donnie was fast expanding his medical knowledge, which had been formidable for as long as Leo could remember, but Splinter's experience was always invaluable. None of the turtles had ever seen the like of the damage done by the collar Raph had been forced to wear. They would all feel better after their father had looked at it and made his diagnosis.

In the meantime, they'd done all they could to make their brother comfortable for the ride back, but Leo knew that the best they could actually do was merely to reduce his pain, or at least not make it worse. That pain was evidenced by his weakening voice, the look in his eyes, and the raspy sound of his breathing, among other things.

The drive home felt longer than the drive out. Every time there was a hitch in Raph's breathing, Leo felt his own breath catch, and a painful doubt would creep in that he'd made the wrong choice. But then Raph's breathing would steady down again.

Mikey lay on the floor, pressed against Raph's shell as if to reassure himself via touch that his brother was really with them, that this wasn't just some dream. Donnie resumed his duties as navigator, though it wasn't as critical this time, since they were only retracing their journey out (hopefully sans a few of the mistakes). Otherwise they were quiet, in part because they were hoping to let Raph rest, but also because they could all sense they'd left a job unfinished, and that disturbed them.

Reminding himself that they weren't through with that place, and that they would be going back to put an end to it didn't make Leo feel a lot better. The periodic rattle of the collar pushed off to one side of the Shellraiser when he accelerated or slowed down sounded like an accusation to him.

He'd saved his brother, that much was true (though in the end it had been more like his brother saving him), but what about all the others? Creatures whose only crime was being mutants, who were living in terrible conditions for no good reason. Creatures just like the little cat, whose bright golden gaze was seared into Leo's memory. Though Raph had seemed sure the cat wouldn't go with them, Leo still felt guilt weighing heavily on his conscience at having left the little creature behind.

One thing was for sure, this didn't feel much like a win to him.


	17. Chapter 17

Back at the lair, Leo was surprised by the shock that momentarily appeared on Splinter's face when they brought Raph in. So often, it seemed as if Splinter had seen everything, as if nothing could surprise him. His vast knowledge and experience was a part of what made the turtles feel so safe with their father around. But Leo had been noticing more and more lately that he and his brothers were encountering things their father had not anticipated. This was apparently one of them.

Splinter quickly masked his initial reaction, covering it with fatherly concern and quiet anger at what had been done to one of his sons as he began to examine Raphael. Leo suspected he was the only one to have noted their Sensei's surprise.

Quickly and expertly, Splinter made a cursory examination of Raph, in the process making the turtles' earlier efforts look amateurish. His gentleness and skill was such that Raph hardly flinched under his hands, even when those hands found bruises and the ragged edges of wounds. With great care, Splinter went over Raphael's body almost inch by inch, using a clean, damp cloth to remove the mud and dried blood that obscured injuries which he then proceeded to treat.

As Leo had suspected, his brother had wounds the turtles hadn't even begun to uncover. Most noticeable was what looked to be a bite wound on one of his arms, and the superficial but very painful cuts on his hands and forearms. Splinter also removed the bandages from the bullet wounds, cleaned and treated the sites and replaced the bandaging. Through it all, Splinter was largely silent, except to occasionally speak in low voice to Raph whenever the red-masked turtle began to get tense. Through it all, Raph didn't make a sound, and moved only when instructed to do so, otherwise lying entirely still.

There had been some improvement in the last hours. The intense shivering had gotten better and now went away almost entirely, and his breathing had evened out a little. But all of them could see that Raph was still a very sickly mutant turtle.

Either because he knew that was the worst damage, or because the turtles had already put the most effort into treating the area, Splinter saved the neck wounds for last. It was clear that this was the most painful for Raph, as his trembling returned when Splinter began to check and treat each of the lacerations around his neck. Even Splinter's expert care wasn't sufficient to stop the pain.

Leo noticed that a hard look came into his Master's eyes as he focused on these particular injuries.

Leo had shown Splinter the collar he'd cut free of his brother's neck, though the item itself was insufficient to explain the extent of the damage done. Not only was it the sort of thing that had no business being around the neck of any turtle (even if it had been fitted properly, which it wasn't), it had clearly been rather severely misused. The deepness of the lacerations across Raph's throat, the darkness of the bruising and severity of the swelling that had occurred even after the collar was removed brought a horrific possibility to mind. At some point, for whatever reason, Raph's entire weight or its equivalent had somehow rested on that portion of the collar, this likely after it had rubbed the skin raw until it bled. Raph offered no explanation, in fact, he hadn't said a word in hours.

It would not have made Leo feel any better to know that the worst of damage was essentially self-inflicted, that Raph had misjudged getting over the fence. Because the plain truth of it was that the collar had no business being there, and his brother didn't deserve to be locked up either. Having seen the conditions he'd been kept in, Leo felt anything Raph might have done to escape had been entirely justified, and any injuries incurred during that escape could be rightly blamed on the people responsible for the cruel conditions of his confinement.

Experience had taught Leo that some people (and creatures) needed to be confined because they were a danger to themselves and others, but Raph didn't fit the bill and -even if he had- there were standards for such confinement that the pen he'd gotten out of certainly did not meet.

Leo's anger was not just for his brother's mistreatment, but for all the other creatures being held there. There was no excuse for what he'd seen. It briefly flashed across his mind that death was too good for people who locked helpless beings up in filthy conditions, and then denied access to adequate food, water and shelter, the very basic needs of all living things. He quickly quashed the thought. Such thoughts were against his nature, and Splinter certainly would not approve. Whatever these people deserved, the only thing such feelings on Leo's part would do was poison his own soul, as well as cloud his thinking, and that would benefit no one.

Finally, Splinter seemed to be finished. Quietly admonishing Raph that he would return shortly, Splinter arose and went to the kitchen. They had put Raph on the couch, as the living room was as far as he'd been able to go. Leo gestured for Donnie and Mikey to stay with Raph, while he himself followed Splinter.

"How is he?" Leo asked quietly, once they were in the kitchen.

"Your brother is strong, as you already know," Splinter replied, "and for once it seems his stubbornness has worked in his favor. But it would also seem he is very fortunate not to be more turtle than he is."

"I don't follow," Leo admitted.

"I do not know what drugs were used," Splinter told him, "But I believe they would have killed any ordinary turtle. Despicable as their intentional cruelty was, it was ignorance that came the closest to taking your brother's life. But now his greatest adversary is dehydration. Already he is very dehydrated, and the injury to his throat has made swallowing painful and difficult. The next few hours will be critical," obviously seeing the fear in Leo's eyes, he added reassuringly, "But I believe he will recover. As I said, your brother is strong. And very stubborn."

"He _is_ that," Leo acknowledged quietly, not fully reassured.

Leo knew full well that regular fluid intake was critical to the health of turtles, even ones like him and his brothers, but that it was especially so if their health or immune systems were compromised. Unlike other aspects of health and fitness, this was something Leo had never needed to be taught, it was something he knew innately simply because he was a turtle, and that was the sort of knowledge turtles were born with. Thus dehydration was very worrying to him.

"As he will need to be," Splinter said with a nod which acknowledged Leo's continued look of concern, "But your task is very different."

He had been facing Leo up to this point, but now turned to the task which had brought him to the kitchen, which was that of preparing a broth which he obviously hoped he would be able to entice Raphael to drink, where Mikey had failed using plain water.

"My task?" Leo inquired.

"Yes. You have told me how you rescued your brother, but there is much you have not yet said. Even were the evidence of that not present on your brother, it is visible in your eyes. You are troubled by more than Raphael's sickness. You feel you have not completed your mission."

As usual, Splinter was entirely correct.

"Raph wasn't the only victim," Leo said, taking a deep breath, "There were other mutants. I want to help them, and to make sure Dr. Laurenson never has the chance to hurt anyone else. But... how do I do that? I know that we're not equipped to take care of them, assuming they need it, but if we just set them free, how do we know they can fend for themselves? How do we know they won't be dangerous for any people they might encounter? And how do we know Laurenson won't just catch them again? He already got Raph once, what's to stop him from doing it again? It was probably one of the canisters _we_ lost that made these mutants. Even if not... it would be wrong to leave them as they are. I _can't_ just do nothing, but... I don't know what to do."

By the time Leo had finished talking, Splinter had finished preparing the broth.

"Here, take this to Raphael. Encourage him to drink it," Splinter said, handing the cup to Leo.

"Where are you going?" Leo asked, as Splinter turned and started to walk away.

"To meditate," Splinter replied over his shoulder, "This is a very serious issue, and will require serious thought."

That answer seemed reasonable, so Leo decided to let it go. Arguing with his Sensei never got him anywhere anyway. He'd been hoping for some kind of advice, hoping Splinter would know what to do. But he realized there were some problems that were new even to his Master.

When Leo returned, Donnie and Mikey seemed to take that as their cue to fade. They didn't bother trying to come up with a pretense, they just went away. Leo felt immensely relieved. He hadn't realized how stressful playing the role of leader had been since this ordeal started. Trying to pretend he knew what he was doing, that everything was going to be alright, it was exhausting. Of course, Raph had never bought Leo's heroic leader act for a second, nor had he ever, even for a moment, been shy about calling Leo out when he thought Leo's ideas were crazy.

But at the end of the day, Raph was always there, no matter how crazy he thought the idea was. He didn't take orders well, and was too aggressive and stubborn for his own good most of the time, but he was always there when all was said and done. In his peculiarly broken way, he was utterly reliable, and Leo was surprised by how much he depended on that. Raph's questioning of his authority made him angry, but it kept him from being scared. And, the more he argued with Raph, the more clear he always got on exactly what he was doing and why (though he didn't always like it).

Defending himself against Raph had always made him stronger, and not just when it came to combat. Raph's attempts to tear Leo's plans to shreds sometimes forced Leo to rethink, or at least to work out details. The plans were stronger _because_ Raph questioned them.

But Raph kept the others at bay by being as volatile as he was. Questions and uncertainty from Donnie and Mikey were harder to take. The two of them expressed their fears softly, showed their nervousness with cracking voice and wide eyes. Raph just always sounded like he wanted to punch something, even when he was scared to death. His hostile approach to everything was actually easier for Leo to deal with than Donnie and Mikey's gentler tendencies. Not only that, but Raph's abrasive manner seemed to either make them reject their own doubts, or try to match his attitude if they agreed with him. The whole team was tougher just because Raph was the way he was.

"You gonna say somethin'? Or are ya just gonna sit there readin' tea leaves?"

Raph's voice startled Leo from his thoughts, and he realized that he'd knelt next to the couch, and been staring at the cup of broth for quite awhile. Rolled onto his side, Raph was regarding Leo with a quiet amusement that seemed totally out of place given what he'd been through. His voice had barely been a whisper, and he was covered in bandages, but the look in his green eyes was just the same as the one he had when he was mocking Leo's beloved _Space Heroes_.

"I'm sorry, Raph," Leo said finally, barely able to look his brother in the eye, "None of this should have happened to you. It's my fault."

"How do ya figure?" Raph inquired, his own gaze steady and unyielding.

"I was the one who had us split up. I was the one who sent you and Mikey after that canister."

"And did you also fire the gun?" Raph asked.

It was clear that he was limiting the number of words he used, and that he would have sounded more emphatic if he'd had the voice for it. Instead, his eyes merely burned into Leo's. Raph's voice might have been quiet and soft, but in his gaze there was all the usual fire, a sharp edge in no way diminished by what had happened. He was physically weak and in pain, but his heart was the same.

"What about the collar? Did you put that on?" Raph persisted when Leo remained silent.

Rather than answer, Leo offered the cup of broth, "Master Splinter says you're supposed to drink this."

Of course Raph moved his head away, without breaking his visual lock on Leo's face. Once he'd latched onto something, he never let go. It was one of his most annoying -but also most valuable- traits. And he wasn't about to let Leo forget it. Not even now.

"Raph, come on, I don't want to fight," Leo said.

"Then give me a little credit for once," Raph retorted, his eyes blazing, though his voice remained soft, "And accept that I knew exactly what I was doing that night," he took a shaking breath, as if preparing for battle, "I knew everything you did about the risks involved. Right up to the point they caught me, nobody made me do anything. I made a _choice_. And you of all people should respect that. You know more than anybody that I don't take orders well and I don't pretend to like somethin' when I don't. If I hadn't wanted to be there that night, you woulda known it."

"Raph, let it go," Leo persisted.

"That's exactly what I'm sayin' to you, Leo," Raph snarled, then winced and softened his tone, "It was a piece of garbage that did this to me, that and my own stupidity. Not you. I know I give you a hard time, and I blame you for a lot of things. But not _this_. And you shouldn't blame you for it either."

Leo didn't want to let go of the guilt. It felt like a denial of responsibility. Earlier, Raph had been in too bad a state to even keep his eyes open, but apparently he'd gathered up an amount of strength on the ride back, at least mentally. Because he was just as defiant as ever. Given the way Raph objected to every one of Leo's plans, and bucked every single order he received, it seemed like he ought to be willing to let Leo wallow in guilt. But Raph wouldn't even let him throw a pity party without giving him a hard time about it. That was Raphael.

"You know, I think I liked it better when you were unconscious," Leo said, shaking his head.

"I get that a lot," Raph replied mildly, the amusement returning to his eyes.

Leo took a deep breath, and was surprised by how much lighter he felt. It occurred to him now that, though Raph had taken abuse and been a prisoner, he'd never really been a victim. The risk of pain, torture and death came with the territory. It was a risk they'd all thought about, understood, and accepted. Leo had just been thinking about that earlier. It was amazing how fast he could forget.

Raph, like all of them, had signed on for this hero stuff, and was willing to take all the good and bad that came with it. So long as he was around, he would never let Leo forget it for long.

Seeing Raph still watching him intently, Leo managed a small smile and said, "Now, about this broth..."


	18. Chapter 18

Raph wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep, but he knew that it must have been awhile because the lair was dark and quiet, and he knew that wouldn't have happened immediately. He didn't entirely remember getting here, and had only intermittent flashes of what had happened after the turtles arrived, including a vague memory of talking to Leo about something that seemed important. Whatever it was, he couldn't remember it clearly, so he hoped it had been resolved.

The last thing he wanted was to be in the middle of having a fight with Leo and not even know it (much less remember what it was about). As arguments constituted the majority of the serious conversations he had with his blue-masked brother, he figured that chance favored they were at odds somehow.

Looking around, it seemed as if there had been some sort of TV watching party, as he was laid out on the couch, and Leo, Donnie and Mikey were all nearby in various undignified states of repose. It was not uncommon for them all to fall asleep watching television, or even some of them watching television and others reading comics. Especially if they'd eaten enough pizza beforehand (a big meal had a tendency to make them sleepy). The only flaw in the theory was that the TV wasn't turned on, and of course they didn't turn it off if they fell asleep watching it.

Belatedly, Raph realized why his brothers were all in here together. If any of his brothers had gone missing for days -especially if they'd come back hurt- he wouldn't have wanted them out of his sight either. The brothers nearly always failed to disperse to their separate rooms after an alarming experience, though of course none of them would admit that there was any reason for it.

It was comforting to wake up surrounded by his brothers, especially after the last few days.

But it wasn't long before Raph found himself thinking about Spot, and the wolfdog, and even the big lizard. They had all been in that situation much longer than Raph. Even though Spot had refused to go with him, would not even have left the pen if not to save him, Raph still felt guilty about leaving the cat behind. Though he couldn't think what, it felt like he could have done _something_. Worse, if it had been one of his brothers, he knew he would have found a way.

Unable to just lie there thinking about it anymore, Raph struggled to sit up. He felt weaker now than he had at any time while held captive, and he supposed that was because he was no longer being fueled by the desperate fear and anger of the trapped animal, that he no longer had urgent purpose or direction for his actions, and that he'd burned the last of his energy reserves just getting out.

Even though he'd gotten some sleep and vaguely remembered drinking some broth at some point, Raph knew neither was enough to make up for even one night of what for him was a normal amount of exertion. They certainly weren't enough to make undo all he'd endured up to this point.

Feeling a tightness around his neck as he eased into a sitting position, Raph reached up in some alarm, then realized it was just bandaging, placed to stop the bleeding, and keep whatever salve Splinter had applied the night before in place, nothihg more sinister.

The collar was off, he remembered that now, and Raph breathed a sigh of relief.

An almost disconnected question flitted through his mind. The wolfdog resented captivity as much as Raph, but did she also hate the collar around her neck? Where the pen curtailed physical freedom, the collar was merely a representation of a claim of ownership and (unless you got it caught on something) did nothing to hinder movement or negate the possibility of choice. Raph knew and understood enough about humans to see the meaning of the collar, but could the same be said of the wolfdog? Remembering the way her eyes blazed when she looked at him, Raph didn't doubt it.

While pondering this, Raph unconsciously began to test his mobility, checking out which injuries hindered his movements and in what way. Everything hurt, but apart from minor stiffness in his joints and pain in his injured leg, the worst problem he had was that he really couldn't turn his head very much or very quickly. He didn't have to try to get up to know his strength was all but gone, however.

Looking around at his brothers, Raph was given to wonder for the first time how they had found him. It wasn't as if he'd just gotten kidnapped by one of the enemies of the turtles that was based in New York. Because of the size of New York, and the cleverness of their enemies, finding him under those conditions would have been an incredible feat by itself. But this had been an unknown, one based far outside New York. It was more than a little remarkable.

At a guess, he suspected it had something to do with Donnie.

Raph knew his geeky brother was smart, but more importantly, he knew the particular chair sprawl Donnie was effecting at the moment only showed up when he'd been working hard at something for days, generally refusing to pause for sleep or sustenance.

All the turtles were looking a little worse for wear, of course, particularly Leo with his bullet wound, which he had quietly tended to by himself at some point and ignored completely ever since. The wound itself wasn't serious, but the consequences of it might have been if the shooter had been allowed to finish what he'd started. But Mikey had also apparently gotten into some sort of trouble, if the scabs on his knuckles were any indication. All of that being the case, it still looked like Donnie had somehow managed to take less care of himself than either Leo or Mikey had, meaning he must have been spending all his time doing something else.

Cautiously, Raph leaned back against the couch and stared up at the ceiling, as if there was some kind of answer up there. He could hear life in New York going on above. It was such a part of his reality that he hadn't noticed it until he paid attention, and realized the ache of homesickness had gone away while he was asleep. He wondered why so many TV show characters talked about wanting to retire to the country, being as he'd hated everything about his short visit.

Unbidden, his thoughts returned to the animals he'd left behind, especially Spot and the wolfdog.

Though Raph knew his own limitations well enough to realize he was unlikely to come up with the solution to the matter of the caged animals, he couldn't seem to let it go. He kept going back to it, looking for a solution, the same way as he'd looked for a way out of that pen, as if going over every inch of it would eventually show him a way out. That was why he was pondering how his brothers had found him. The only way they could have done it was by knowing something which he currently didn't. The answer to the puzzle might lie somewhere in that information.

Then again, it might not.

"You probably shouldn't be sitting up yet."

Raph startled, and looked over at Leo, who had clearly just woken up. Leo had probably started out right side up in the bean bag, but at some point he'd turned upside down. Now he righted himself and stretched, yawning and blinking sleepily. None of the brothers woke up readily.

Memory of the pain in his throat when he talked bid Raph stay silent until he had something worthwhile to say, so he just let his expression convey to Leo that he didn't appreciate his brother telling him what he should or should not be doing in this instance. Leo had seen the look often enough to read it unaided. He yawned again, and did not pursue the issue.

Instead, he changed the subject, "What would you say to drinking some more broth?"

Wary of irritating his neck, Raph cautiously shrugged in response. Leo apparently decided to take it as a Yes, because he got up and wandered off in the direction of the kitchen, returning a few moments later with a steaming cup. Raph had a dim memory of being unable to manage the cup last time, but he wasn't about to let Leo do it for him now. The bandages protecting the cuts he'd gotten from the barbed wire made it a little awkward, but he took the cup anyway.

It irritated him how helpless he was.

"You look better," Leo observed quietly, returning to the bean bag when it was evident that his assistance would only be resented, "How do you feel?"

Raph merely glared at him and took a sip of the broth. It felt good on his throat, and that distracted him because it seemed like it had been forever since anything actually felt good. The closest he could remember getting to something feeling good in the last few days was actually just feeling less bad. The broth also felt soothing in his stomach, loosening the knot it felt like it had tied itself in just a little. The relief Raph felt made him close his eyes with a sigh, forgetting Leo entirely for the moment.

"Okay, that was a stupid question," Leo admitted, and Raph opened his eyes to look at his brother, wishing he felt like scoffing, but instead just sipping the broth some more.

Leo sighed, looking agitated. Raph wondered what they'd fought about this time. Whatever it was, Leo wasn't acting how Raph would have expected him to. In fact, by the look in his blue eyes, Leo's thoughts weren't in this room at all. It bothered him, not knowing where Leo's head was at. Raph would rather be at odds with Leo and know why, than to be on the same page without knowing it. It was hard enough to follow Leo when the signals were clear.

Finally, a clarity came into Leo's eyes. He'd thought of something, come to a decision of some kind. Only Raph wasn't sure what. It seemed to involve him, because Leo looked at him for a moment, with that new fierceness in his gaze, then his eyes softened as his focus returned to the room, and Raph in particular.

"What can you tell me about Irving Laurenson?" Leo asked.

Raph blinked, "Who?"

This was clearly not the answer Leo had been hoping for, and it was soon clear why.

"That's the name of the man who owns that property you were held on. He's the one who's behind everything that goes on there. Clearly he's got other people working for him, but he's the one we've got to stop. Only we barely know anything about him."

Raph sighed and shrugged, "I dunno, Leo. I barely saw anybody until I busted out," he thought for a moment, "But if I had to guess, I'd say he had to have been the disembodied voice."

"The what?" now it was Leo's turn to blink in confusion.

"When they took blood," Raph replied rather absently, "There was a voice through the speaker. Voice of authority, you'd know what that sounds like."

"They took blood?" Leo asked sounding halfway between shock and outrage.

Raph shrugged, not bothering to say anything to that. Then he thought it over and changed his mind.

"Honestly, I was more bothered by what they put in than what they took out."

Leo looked so uncomfortable that Raph got the feeling he somehow knew exactly what Raph was referring to. He didn't see how Leo could. But then, he didn't see how his brothers had found him either. He decided to just accept, without understanding how, that Leo knew or had somehow guessed.

"So what now, Leo?" Raph asked.

There was a heavy silence, and Raph got the feeling Leo had been hoping he wouldn't ask, even though they both knew that he had to. In that silence, Raph became aware that Mikey and Donnie had woken up, but were pretending they hadn't. They weren't fooling anyone, least of all Leo, who would now feel as if he had to come up with something just to put them at ease. Raph's question wasn't looking for just any answer, it was looking for the answer of a leader. Whether or not he ever regretted asking for the position, Leo was that leader. They had to look to him, just as he had to tell them where to go. If things were otherwise, there would be no team, and they all knew it.

"Know the enemy," Leo said finally, looking not at Raph but at some unseen thing, the goal he'd set his sights on, "We were so busy finding where he was and what he might be doing that we never looked into _who_ Irving Laurenson is."

Forgetting he was pretending to be asleep, Donnie sat up and replied, "I don't follow. We dug up everything we could. That's how we found the blog."

"But the blog gave us what we wanted, so we didn't look any further," Leo told him, "We know what Laurenson thinks of himself. What does the rest of the world think of him? And what about our friend in the hospital? I'm guessing he'll be getting out soon, and I think we should have a word with him."

"That sounds very ambitious," Raph admitted, "But I don't see where that gets us."

"If we know about Irving Laurenson, we can figure out how to take him down," Leo said confidently, "It's not enough to take the animals he's got now. We need to find a way to be sure he never touches, much less mutates, another animal again. Not after we're through with him."

"Leo, I'm as much for researching as anyone," Donnie said, "But even if we find a way to stop this guy, there's still the animals he has now to be considered. What do we do about them?"

Raph saw the faltering in Leo's eyes. It was true that Raph was inclined to pick on Leo's plans, especially when they had holes in them. But, in the end, he always had his brother's back. It was clear Leo needed that from him in this moment. The time to pick on Leo was when he was overconfident, sure of himself and his direction when he had no good reason to be. Not when he was doubting himself, not when the others had need of his leadership to give them a solid place to stand.

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Donnie. One thing at a time," Raph snapped with as much emphasis as his throat would allow, flashing his brother a withering look, "We cross that bridge when we come to it."

Donnie was clearly baffled by Raph's apparently hostile response to what had seemed like a perfectly obvious and innocent question. Genius though he was, he completely missed Raph's reason. There was no telling what Mikey, who hadn't spoken at all, was making of this. It always depended on where Mikey's focus was. On the rare occasion when he was paying attention, Mikey was surprisingly astute. But more often he was off in a world of his own. However, by the startled and then grateful look in Leo's eyes, he understood exactly what Raph had done, and why.

That was more than enough.


	19. Chapter 19

Leo's plan mostly made more work for Donnie (again), though Leo helped by going through the rest of the papers they'd taken from the apartment, it being a technologically simple enough task for him to manage unassisted. Raph spent most of the time sleeping, while Mikey helped by watching cartoons or reading comics or otherwise staying out of the way.

In fact, whenever his brother was awake enough to listen, Mikey tried reading his comics to Raph. To the surprise of both Leo and Donnie, Raph did not appear to object. Mikey, on the other hand, did not seem surprised. Normally, when reading aloud to harass Raph, Mikey would stay out of easy slapping range. In this instance, doing so would have been easy, as getting up on his own was initially beyond Raph's limited abilities. But Mikey parked himself on the floor with his back against the couch, so he could hold up the comic and Raph could look at the pictures. If Raph had wanted to slap him, he could have, even in his present state. But he didn't.

"You know, sometimes I don't get those two," Donnie muttered when he and Leo returned to the lab from a break for lunch, "Not that I get you either, but you're... different."

"Gee thanks," Leo said sarcastically.

"You know what I mean," Donnie grumbled, "Raph thinks every problem can be solved by punching it hard enough, and Mikey... well, we both know how Mikey is. Anyway, they should both be predictable because of it. But it's easier to follow you than either of them."

"That's because I'm the leader," Leo reminded him.

"That's not what I meant and you know it."

Leo sighed, "No, I know. But you're missing the obvious."

"Which is?" Donnie asked.

"For all the tough talk and attitude, there's a lot of gentleness to Raph," Leo said, "But don't you dare tell him I said that."

"He'd kill us both," Donnie agreed.

Leo continued, "Raph wasn't the only one hurt by what happens, and he knows it."

"You think he knows how guilty Mikey feels?" Donnie inquired.

Leo nodded, "And he's doing the best thing he can. He's letting Mikey help him get better, to show there's no hard feelings about what happened. That's something neither of us could do, because we weren't there when it happened that night."

What Leo didn't say, but suspected Donnie already knew, was that after what had happened to him, Raph probably wasn't ready to be left alone. Leo knew that sometimes the lair felt overcrowded, and each of them would periodically wish he lived alone. But Leo also knew that none of them could imagine anything like it. They had always been together, spending mere minutes or hours apart. Not one of them had ever been separated from the others for long and -though the fantasy appeared inviting- the reality of it was a horrifying thing to contemplate. They were a family, and Raph had been taken from that, had undoubtedly believed at times that he would never see his brothers again. It was only natural that he would, for the moment, be more tolerant of Mikey than usual.

Donnie seemed to chew on that for a bit, decided it made sense, and dropped it.

He changed the subject, "How's it coming on your end?"

Leo groaned, "It's not. I'm beginning to think the guy in the hospital and Irving Laurenson have nothing to do with each other. It seems like we got lucky, finding the only link between them in that blog. You?"

"Ugh," Donnie grunted by way of reply, "Firstly, Laurenson isn't as uncommon a name as I was hoping. That includes an actual field researcher who seems to spend most of her time studying cheetahs and Ethiopian wolves. Unlike _our_ Laurenson, who probably hasn't spent a day in the field in his life."

Leo sat and blinked for a moment, finally understanding.

"That guy in the hospital doesn't seem to have any connection to Laurenson because he _really_ doesn't have one," Leo said firmly, "He's not a research assistant. He's a... a... hunter for hire. That's why the connection is so thin. He doesn't work for Laurenson. He works for someone who was paid by Laurenson to bring one of us in, specifically Mikey. We couldn't find a greater connection than that because there isn't one."

Donnie stared at him in silence for a long moment, then slowly nodded.

"I guess that makes sense. But where does that leave us?" he asked.

"Exactly where we were already. If we stop Laurenson, we stop them all. The guys in New York were paid to watch us and then later to hunt us. If the money stops, so do they."

"That'd be great," Donnie said, "If Irving Laurenson wasn't a ghost."

"We'll find something, Don," Leo reassured him, "We always do."

It was easier to say than it was to believe.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, it was Donnie who finally came up with something the turtles could use, though at first they were a little bit baffled as to what they could do with the information.

"I've got him," Donnie said quietly to himself.

Looking around the lab, he realized he was alone, and remembered that Leo had opted to get some rest after concluding that the guy in the hospital was essentially a dead end. So Donnie got up and hurried to look for his brothers, who had all crashed in the living room, as had become usual in recent days.

He went and shook Leo by the shoulder, "Leo, I've got him!"

Leo startled and yelped, then stared at Donnie without apparent comprehension. Leo's outcry had woken the other two, who stared with equal bafflement. Donnie looked flustered and wild-eyed, and like he'd spent entirely too many hours working.

"What's he on about?" Raph wanted to know.

"I think he said he's got something," Mikey replied, yawning and rubbing his eyes, "I hope it's not contagious."

But for Leo, it suddenly clicked, "Irving Laurenson?"

"Isn't Irving Laurenson," Donnie replied, "At least, he didn't used to be."

"It's way too early for this, bro," Raph informed him, "What are you talkin' about?"

"Irving Laurenson wasn't always Irving Laurenson," Donnie explained, "He was born Kyle Irving. A few years ago, he was busted in Texas on charges of animal cruelty. After paying a fine and spending a few months in jail, he changed his name and moved up north."

"And picked up right where he left off," Leo said.

"According to what I found, Irving always denied that he had done anything wrong," Donnie said, "Though it couldn't be proven, there was evidence to suggest that he wasn't just keeping exotic animals in appalling conditions, he was probably trying to breed them and sell them for profit."

"And what's more exotic than a mutant?" Leo shook his head, disgusted with the whole idea.

"It does explain what he wanted with Raph's blood," Donnie said, "He was probably trying to find out what kind of turtle Raph was, so he could get hold of a female and mutate her."

"Well that's gross and weird in so many ways," Mikey observed.

Raph looked uncomfortable with this whole line of conversation, but there was a look in his eyes suggesting he wasn't thinking about what the rest of them were thinking about.

Leo picked up on it, "Raph, what's up?"

"There was a wolfdog," Raph replied somewhat distractedly, "She wasn't a mutant, but she was pregnant."

"Oh..." Donnie let out a sharp breath, "Leo. Leo... _the dogs_..."

"The wolfdog got out of the pen when I did," Raph said, "But I don't see how she could have gotten out of the larger enclosure. She's got to still be on the property somewhere."

"And she's probably not the only non-mutant out there," Donnie said, continuing, "I think it's pretty clear that this is an assembly in progress. Even the blog, which I think may actually be for the benefit for anyone insane enough to become a customer. So they can feel like they know something about the animal they just bought. There's just enough truth in the blog for it to sell, especially if your customer is some rich person who wants a mutant wolf for a pet; it's probable they wouldn't know reality if it bit them."

"Which it would almost definitely do at some point," Raph observed, "Your average mutant ain't exactly friendly, and it sure don't belong in somebody's yard as a pet."

"You could say that about a non-mutant wolf," Donnie replied, "Train them all you want, but they're still going to be a wild animal, and you have to respect that. Something almost nobody buying an exotic animal for a house-pet is likely to do."

"So it's safe to say that if we don't stop this, somebody's gonna get hurt?" Mikey asked, "Besides us, I mean?"

"Yes," Leo confirmed, "And that's _exactly_ the angle we play."

"You lost me," Donnie said.

"This guy's gone down for animal cruelty once. I bet we can make him do it again. Maybe this time it'll stick. Or at least keep him out of our way until we can take care of this mutagen problem."

"What about the mutants?" Raph inquired.

Always right to the point, he didn't give Leo a moment to savor the relief of finally having the beginnings of an actual game plan by pointing out something Leo hadn't figured out how to solve. Something which brought the plan to a screeching halt until he figured that out too.

For a moment, Leo was annoyed with his brother. Why couldn't he have given Leo five seconds to feel relieved, and then realize the problem for himself? Then he sighed. Raph couldn't do it because that had been the thing which had been bothering him this whole time. Even though Raph had told Leo that Spot wouldn't go with them, it had been clear to Leo from that moment forward that Raph's thoughts had almost constantly been with those the turtles had left behind. Raph's first thought after Donnie revealed what he'd learned was for the pregnant wolfdog. So naturally, he couldn't let go of this thing until there was some kind of answer. An answer he seemed to believe Leo had.

But the next one to speak was Splinter, who had remained shut in his room for some days now. None of the turtles knew when he had joined them, he had stood by so quietly.

"You will let them go," Splinter said, his tone one of authority.

Clearly, this was not a suggestion.

"But what if they hurt somebody?" Leo protested.

"Or somebody hurts them?" Raph also objected.

"I have meditated on this for a long time," Splinter said calmly, "And it has become clear that this is the correct course. There are many uncertainties, but we know several things for certain. The mutants cannot be allowed to remain prisoners of Irving Laurenson. In the hands of the government, they would spend the rest of their lives being studied, or else be destroyed. We cannot keep them ourselves. Therefore, we must give them their freedom. It is all that we can do."

"But..." Raph broke off, a troubled look in his eyes, avoiding Splinter's gaze.

"But what, Raphael?" Splinter asked gently.

"What if..." Raph hesitated, then looked at his Sensei, "What if they won't take it?"

Leo closed his eyes, recognizing the source of Raph's worry. Leo hadn't really gotten to know Spot, having seen him for only a handful of seconds. But the creature was small, seemingly helpless and thoroughly harmless. And Leo remembered that, though the cat had stayed in the crate of his own accord, he had jumped out to check on Leo when the turtle had been shot. That moment was enough to show that Spot cared for the welfare of others. Raph had spent days with the cat.

"You cannot make someone accept a gift, Raphael," Splinter said, "You can only offer the choice."

Raph dropped his gaze, and said nothing further, clearly far from reassured.

Leo understood. In fact, he was pretty sure they all did. What Splinter had just told them to do seemed like it would be tantamount to sentencing some of the mutants to a potentially slow and painful death. Mutants like Spot. How would they survive on their own? Would their mutation be a help or a hindrance for the ones who were far from the place their species called home?

Leo didn't like it when the world wasn't black and white, with clearly defined lines between what was right and what was wrong. Shades of gray bothered him. But it was obvious that Splinter was correct; it was the only thing they could do under the circumstances. It didn't seem right, or fair. But they couldn't just undo what Laurenson had done. They could only do the best they could for his victims.

Not so long ago, it had felt like the team was at the top of their game, as if no enemy could stand against them. But ever since that mission where their overconfidence had proven to be their undoing, it seemed like they had been faced with nothing but ambiguity and defeat. Not only were battles inconclusive, but it was getting harder to tell friend from foe. It felt like the whole world was changing, spinning out of control too fast for them to keep up, let alone control it, all as a consequence of that singular failure.

They'd believed they'd known all they needed to about heroics. But even though they had known that theirs was often a struggle of life and death, they hadn't fully comprehended how high the stakes really were, or how many people could be hurt. People close to them. People they cared about.

If not for that failure, Raph would never have been in the alley that night. Irving Laurenson might never have had the mutagen to do what he was doing now. As seemed to be happening so often lately, there was no way for them to go back and fix what they had broken.

The only way through was forward, straight through the mud.


	20. Chapter 20

It felt as if even the weather had turned against them.

The turtles had missed the first snow of the year in New York. The second snow just wasn't the same. But it did interrupt their travel plans, as the roads to their destination were temporarily blocked. By the time the roads were clear enough to drive, a new problem asserted itself: Raphael wanted to go with them, and the delay had given him time to get strong enough to try.

"Raph, there's no reason for you to go back there. We can handle it," Leo assured him.

"Well if you can handle it, there's no reason I shouldn't go," Raph challenged.

Leo was loathe to point out that Raph was still very weak, or that they all knew his vision was sometimes compromised, one of the lingering aftereffects of the bullet to the head. And he certainly didn't want to point out that Raph's leg still sometimes folded under him, or that his dexterity still wasn't up to par. Doing any of that would only trigger a fight, probably a physical one where Raph would try to prove his combative soundness by beating Leo.

Not only didn't Leo want to hurt Raph physically, he didn't want to do the emotional damage that such a fight would cause. He wanted his brother solid again as soon as possible, and there would be no percentage or honor in humiliating the still recovering Raphael.

"Don't you think you've seen enough of that place?" Leo asked, hoping to avoid all that.

Leo could see in Raph's eyes that he'd struck truly; Raph no more wanted to go back there than he would like to visit Hell. But in the shadows behind his eyes, it was clear that Raph wasn't going to let go of it. There was some reason he felt that he _had_ to go back.

"This time we know what we're doing," Leo said, guessing that Raph was concerned about the welfare of his brothers and hoping to alleviate that concern.

He'd guessed wrong.

"I gave Spot his name, Leo," Raph told him flatly, "And then I left him behind."

Leo sighed. He knew he could argue that leaving Spot wasn't Raph's fault. He could promise that he and the others would see to it that Spot was taken care of. He could say that Raph's weakness might get them all killed if he folded at the wrong time. He could say all sorts of things. But he knew the guilt he'd felt himself for leaving Spot behind. From the look in his eyes, the burden Raph was carrying was a lot heavier, so heavy it would crush him if he didn't get out from under it.

So instead of arguing, Leo merely nodded silently, and the argument ended without another word. Ready or not, Raph was going back with them.

* * *

The drive out was split between Leo and Donnie. Raph might be going with them, but he was in no condition to operate a motor vehicle. And none of them were about to trust Mikey at the wheel. They were going to drive out in the dark, stay in the Shellraiser somewhere out of sight of the road throughout the day, and then make their move when night fell again.

It was a long time to sit in cramped quarters with nothing to do, especially with Mikey and Raph in the confined space together, but Leo sensed that for once it wouldn't be a problem. He and his brothers were united in their focus on the mission, even Mikey. They had all felt the recent sting of defeats and ambiguous victories just as he had. They also all had a personal stake in this one.

Donnie wanted to put a halt to Laurenson's mad idea of science before it got more out of hand. Raph wanted to go back for his former cell mates (and likely for revenge as well). And Mikey was looking for redemption, still believing he was to blame for Raph's capture. They all wanted to finish this thing now it was started, didn't want to let anything distract them for fear of losing their chance to end it.

For all of his errors, Irving Laurenson had one thing right. When the turtles hunted, they did it best as a group, or a pack, like wolves. But Laurenson was wrong in thinking that it came naturally to them. This unified way of moving, thinking and acting was something they'd spent their whole lives learning to do, specifically because it was so opposite to their natures. Each in his own way was an independent entity, disinclined to follow or work well with others. But Splinter had trained them well, and their experiences had made them stronger as individuals and as a unit.

Raph and Mikey rode in the back across from each other. As he had done so much lately, Raph spent much of the drive asleep, giving Mikey no opportunity to break focus and start harassing him. Still wracked with guilt and concern over his brother's still visible injuries, Mikey would not risk waking him for anything, no matter how bored he got.

Leo and Donnie were up front, and thus out of targeting range for Mikey. Steadier than the others except when excessively pressured, Donnie was able to fixate on an objective to the exclusion of all else better than anyone else Leo knew. That wasn't always to his benefit, but if Donnie was focused on the right thing during a mission, it often made all the difference.

Donnie was a lot easier to aim in the right direction than his brothers, in part because he wasn't so quick off the mark, and tended to take his time to think through what he was doing. Aiming Raph and Mikey was often like trying to grab hold of an already launched rocket and get it to go where Leo wanted it to. It was hard to say which was harder to aim, because Mikey's unfocused, all-over-the-place personality often sent him bolting the wrong way, which could give more opportunity to redirect him, but could also plunge him straight into disaster. Raph was more difficult to redirect, but his aim was most often true, as he relentlessly stuck by his belief that the shortest distance between two points was the best, and the best was a straight line.

Fortunately, more and more lately, the team had as individuals and as a whole been able to find their place without needing anyone to steer them. Leo was still the leader, deciding on the group objective (and plan if there was time to form one) but after that he found things usually worked best if he trusted his brothers to go where they needed to without interference. Time and again, when something unexpected came up in a fight, Leo had turned to find the exact brother he needed just a breath away as if by magic, engaged in what they were doing, but somehow alert enough to heed his instructions.

The team had gotten overconfident, and that had nearly led to their ruination, but there was still no denying that they were very, _very_ good at what they did.

Leo was determined not to let that thought out of his mind for a second. If he lost touch with that knowledge, all the worries and the what ifs and maybes would close in and he'd be choked by the fear that the setup wouldn't be as they remembered, that somehow Laurenson knew and had prepared for their return, that one of them would make a mistake, that they would all wind up prisoners of a madman, or dead. And if he let that fear take him, the whole team would feel it, and their reactions to it would shake them apart. Then they would truly be lost.

* * *

Though none of them had really expected to be able to sleep, all of them had done so. The tension had been exhausting, even though it had primarily been caused by being unable to actually do anything. Not only did all of the turtles fall asleep, they flopped around in their sleep until they were in a disorganized pile on the floor of the Shellraiser, each using some portion of his brother's anatomy for a pillow.

It had been a much easier drive this time, as Leo and Donnie had learned from their previous mistakes, and remembered the route now they'd driven it once. That left them plenty of daylight to sleep through, though the days were short at this time of year, especially this far north.

Despite being the last to sleep, Donnie had somehow wound up on the bottom of the pile.

He woke up feeling half suffocated with Mikey snoring draped across his back, Leo partially on Mikey with an out-flung arm across Donnie's throat. Sleeping in a heap was something the brothers had done on numerous occasions, and Donnie somehow always seemed to wind up on the bottom. At least it meant he was practiced at extracting himself without waking his brothers.

This he did, only to find that he was not the only one awake. Having slept for most of the drive, Raph had understandably woken up before any of the others. He had moved to the driver's seat and was looking through the windshield.

Raph and Don didn't have much in common, and generally spent little time together. Even during missions, Leo almost invariably paired Mikey with Raph. On the rare occasion when he opted for a different split, it was Raph and Donnie who switched places, an orientation that usually didn't go well, at least on Donnie and Mikey's end. It was a total mystery to Don how Raph kept Mikey out of trouble and held his own in battle at the same time. In fact, as he had recently admitted to Leo, there were times when Raph himself was a total mystery.

Donnie moved to the front of the Shellraiser and sat in the shotgun seat. He looked out the windshield, and saw that snow was lightly falling from the darkening sky. Night hadn't fallen yet, but it was coming on fast. A glance at Raph said that the red-masked turtle wasn't thinking about the night, he was seeing a deeper darkness through that windshield, a darkness Donnie had only had a dim glimpse of.

Unintentionally, Donnie found his gaze wandering to the marks on Raph's neck. The wounds there had healed sufficiently to remove the bandaging, but it would be some time before the ugly reminder of Raph's ordeal disappeared from view. Raph still hadn't told them how that had happened. In fact, Raph only offered details specifically relevant to what they were doing here now, and then often only at Leo's prompting. But Donnie knew that those marks weren't merely the result of an ill-fitting collar, especially not one Raph had worn for only a couple of days.

Still, Donnie suspected it was one of those nightmares that was actually a lot more terrifying after you woke up. Or in this case, after you escaped. Only after where you'd been and what could have happened had been realized could the real horror start to sink in.

"You don't... _have_ to go with us," Donnie offered hesitantly, wanting to comfort his brother, but fearful of starting a fight, "You could wait here."

"If I didn't have to go, do you think Leo would've let me?" Raph returned quietly, turning his head just enough to look Donnie in the eye, an odd calm in his usually fiery gaze.

"No," Don admitted, finding himself unaccountably unable to meet Raph's gaze and so instead looking out the windshield again, "I suppose not."

By the time he convinced himself that he had no reason to be nervous about meeting Raph's gaze and turned towards his brother, Raph had returned to looking at the snow outside. As happened so often with their conversations, an awkward silence followed.

Most of the time, Donnie just tried to stay off Raph's bad side. The only reliable means of doing so was to say nothing, and stay out of his way, though even that sometimes backfired. Most conflict within the team centered on Raph and some other party, either Leo or Mikey. But every now and then, Donnie would find himself somehow at odds with Raph, usually because one of them inadvertently (and usually unknowingly) touched on a raw nerve. But, strangely, Raph also had stronger relationships with both Leo and Mikey than with Donnie, even though he fought with them almost constantly.

"I still don't really know how you guys found me," Raph said after awhile, "But... uh... I know you put a lot of hours into it. And you've done a lot of the work up to now too. So... uh... thanks."

"Forget it," Donnie replied without even thinking, "You'd've done the same. Besides, you're the one that gave us the lead that eventually allowed us to trace Irving Laurenson."

"Me? What did I do?" Raph inquired, sounding genuinely surprised.

"That guy you nailed when you got caught. We found Laurenson through him," Don answered.

Raph turned slightly, blinking at Donnie with a rather blank expression. It was evident that either he had no memory whatsoever of what Don was referring to, or else he was unaware that he had actually hit his target. Donnie was kind of hoping it was the latter.

"You _do_ remember getting caught, don't you?" Donnie asked cautiously.

Raph shrugged rather indifferently, "Only a little."

Don supposed that made sense, thinking about it. The trauma of being shot twice, followed by a toxic sedative had probably rendered his memory a little fuzzy. Probably nothing to worry about. Donnie let his momentary panic subside.

"Well you hit of them. Mikey thinks it was the one who shot you to begin with, but he's not sure," Donnie replied, "We paid a visit to his apartment. It was the only chance we had."

Raph nodded, frowning slightly, giving Donnie the impression that his foggy memory bothered him more than he'd initially let on. Either that or he was unhappy to have missed out on the chance to burglarize an apartment. Or maybe it just bothered him to think about the risks his brothers had taken to get him back. Probably that last one, Don decided.

Then he turned back to the windshield. Outside, the darkness had settled in firmly.

"Let's wake the others," Raph said, "It's time to go to work."


	21. Chapter 21

Wisps of cloud veiled the moon, shrouding the world below in shadows that even the light reflecting blanket of snow on the ground could not dispel. A world of silver dimmed to shades of gray, fading the sharp outlines of objects as if they were cast in fog. Except for the low wind whistling through the leafless tree branches overhead, the night was still and quiet. Every pen was cast in gloom, its occupants rendered invisible unless they had eyes which were open and luminous.

In silence, the turtles roamed the aisles between the pens, doing a headcount, assessing which captives were apt to be most dangerous when released, and which were not to be released at all. For the plan to work, the non-mutants would have to remain behind. Mutants and non-mutants were largely separate, but some seemed to have been carelessly tossed together. Matched pairs of mutants were kept in their own pens, but if there was only one of a particular kind, or if they were both of the same gender, they were either isolated in their own pen or put in with other singletons. There seemed to be no reason for the difference but perhaps there was and it was merely unclear.

Because they were quiet, quick, and stuck to the protection of the shadows, the turtles went unnoticed by the sleepy and sleeping animals. All, that is, except for one. As he passed by the larger enclosure he had once broken into and then out of, Raph was startled by a sudden roar-like growl and the sense of something rushing at him from a wooden structure he'd failed to notice the first time. Eyes ablaze, the wolfdog hurled herself at the fence, hooking onto it with her claws and toes, and biting at it, glaring at Raph and making it clear what she would be doing to him if not for the barrier.

In an instant, she had leaped back, landing on her feet with her head lowered and fangs showing, still growling ferociously, every muddy and matted hair on end.

The noise attracted the notice of the other turtles, who abandoned their positions among the pens to investigate. As each of them joined Raph, the wolfdog began to crouch lower, her tail tucking to her belly. When Leo, the farthest from Raph and so last to arrive, joined the others, she choked down her growl and slunk back towards the wood structure, stopping frequently to peer warily over her shoulder at them as if she expected the turtles to chase her.

She had clearly recognized them as a pack at once. She had seen Raph's ability to fight with her own eyes, and knew by instinct what others might have to have been told, which was that all the turtles could fight, and Leonardo was their leader. She wanted no part of a fight with them, and so retreated, went into hiding. Though they could no longer see her, Raph could feel the wolfdog's eyes on them.

"That your wolfdog?" Donnie asked quietly.

"Yeah," Raph replied.

"Well she doesn't look very pregnant," Donnie observed.

Raph nodded slightly, but said nothing. From the moment she'd rushed him, he'd gotten the sense that she wasn't actually trying to attack him. She was too wise for that. She knew the fence would stop her. She wasn't trying to hunt him as prey. She was trying to warn him away from something she was protecting. The wolfdog had given birth, and her pups were somewhere under that wood structure.

"That changes things," Leo said, having picked up the logic trail on his own.

"It does?" Mikey asked.

"Yeah," Leo said, "It's way too cold out here for a newborn. Assuming the pups aren't dead already, we've got to get them in out of the cold, sooner rather than later."

"You want to climb in there and steal wolf pups?" Donnie asked incredulously, gesturing to the pen.

"I'm the one who knows her best," Raph said before Leo could answer, "If anyone goes in, it oughta be me."

"Your ability to move is compromised," Leo pointed out, "If she makes a rush for you, you may not be able to get out of the way fast enough."

"She may not be a mutant, but she's the smartest animal in this place," Raph said, not taking his eyes off the shadows where he sensed the wolfdog to be, "She won't do anything stupid."

Leo opened his mouth, then sighed deeply, a cloud of frost appearing in the air as he exhaled.

"Okay, but I'm going with you," he said finally, "Donnie and Mikey, you look for some place close by where we can put the pups, and try to make it secure. I think she'll go wherever her pups go, but we don't want her trying to take them away."

For a moment, Raph looked from the shadows to Leo, studying his brother's blue eyes, sensing there was something Leo hadn't said, wondering what it was, and it if was important. Often the things Leo didn't say were just as or even more important than the things he did. Raph sensed that this was one of those times, and he wished he was better at understanding Leo when he didn't talk. But Leo usually spent so much time talking that Raph couldn't get a lot of practice reading his silences.

Deciding he wouldn't be able to suss it out, Raph moved to the gate of the enclosure and popped the lock on it with his sai. It was ridiculously easy to get into the pens from the outside, especially when carrying the right tools for the job. Raph cast a brief glance at the barbed wire up top as he went through the gate, and felt relieved that he wouldn't be going over that again. Leo followed him through, and shut the gate behind him, not wanting the wolfdog to run away.

It wasn't that Leo thought she would escape. As he'd said, he believed she'd stay close to her pups. What concerned him was that, once she left the enclosure, he would no longer be able to keep tabs on her location. The wolfdog was quite dangerous enough when they knew where she was, especially as their objective was not to harm her, whereas there was every indication that she would harm them if they provoked her. Seeing as from her perspective they were about to be trying to steal her pups, it was very likely that the wolfdog would be provoked rather severely.

A warning growl issued from the shadows. Raph thought he could just make out the outline of the wolfdog's skull, her ears turned back and flattened against her neck, but in the dark he wasn't sure. He could feel her eyes on him, fearful and furious, and the sense of hunger that came off her was stronger than ever. If she decided to attack, she would do more than just try to drive them away.

"What's the plan, Raph?" Leo asked, apparently deferring to Raph's experience, "I don't think sweet talking is gonna cut it."

Eyes locked on where he felt the wolfdog's gaze to be, Raph replied in a low voice, "When she goes for me, let her. I'll handle the wolfdog. You worry about the pups."

"That's a terrible plan!" Leo objected.

"You could've stayed outside the fence," Raph retorted, not looking at Leo.

Separating from Leo, Raph moved around the wooden structure, approaching from the side opposite the gate. Leo, though unhappy about the plan, waited where he was, hanging back and letting Raph's movement draw the wolfdog's attention.

Raph was careful of his position, making sure he didn't close the gap between himself and the wolfdog by so much as an inch, revolving around her as if they were planets in space. He stopped when he could see Leo directly in front of him through the wooden structure.

This structure seemed almost formless, as if it had been a prototype of the one the mutant lizard used as a throne; a prototype that weather and time had begun to break apart. It was more like a disarranged heap of wood with some nails stuck in it than a true structure. It was no place to have a baby.

Briefly, Raph lifted his gaze to meet Leo's. He could not see Leo's eyes at this distance in the dark, but he felt their gazes lock anyway. Leo knew it was a signal, and knew what it meant. He was ready. Raph's gaze slid back to the shadows from which the wolfdog must begin her rush, and he took one measured step forward. One step was all that was necessary.

In utter silence, the wolfdog blazed from cover like an explosion of fire. No warning accompanied this attack, because it was not a threat, but a move for the kill. Raph had always known that, given the chance, the wolfdog would try to kill him. Her hunger was far greater now than it had been when they'd last met, and the combination of starvation and protective fury rendered her blind to the risk for just a few, breathless seconds. It was all Raph needed to bring her down.

Covering the ground in a dark flash, the wolfdog lunged upwards, aiming for Raph's throat or face, knowing that his exposed mid-section was not soft like the bellies of other creatures, knowing she must aim for the one vital part of him which was not protected by a shell. She was not aiming to cripple him to bring him down, as a lone assailant she could not take the time and energy cost, let alone the risk that he would fight back. So she aimed straight and true for a killing bite.

Raph intercepted her, catching her by the collar under her throat in one hand, halting her forward progress toward his neck with her front teeth a fraction of an inch out of range, her jaws snapping shut uselessly on air. Her weight threw him backward, though he had purposely braced with his good leg. He let her momentum take them to ground, twisting as he fell to place her underneath him, his free hand coming into position at the side of her skull, just at the hinge of her jaws. When she landed on her side, she sank through a couple inches of snow before hitting the frozen ground. Raph pinned her head with the hand at her jaws, aided by the one at her collar, rolling partially onto her so that his weight was on her shoulders.

Her teeth and powerful jaws disabled, she could not bite. Thrown off her feet, she didn't have the leverage to heave Raph's weight off, and his strength exceeded her own as she briefly writhed under him, seeking escape. The fight was over in a moment. The wolfdog was intelligent enough to know when she was beaten. And Raph was intelligent enough not to drop his guard, even as the wolfdog stared up at him. If he let her go, she would be on him again in a moment.

Though it had all taken no more than a few seconds, both Raph and the wolfdog were panting. The tension of preparation, and the effort of the execution had left them breathless.

After assuring himself that his hold on the wolfdog was as solid as he'd initially believed, Raph allowed himself to look up and see what Leo was doing. Leo had gone at once to the wooden structure, and now he exited its shadows into the curtained moonlight, carrying three tiny bundles.

One of those bundles had a grip on his thumb with something that looked very much like a hand. At sight of this, Raph understood what Leo had not said. The wolfdog was no mutant, but her mate might have been. There had been no way of telling what her pups would be like. It was clear that at least one of them -and therefore probably all of them- was a mutant.

Raph looked back at the wolfdog, feeling a pang of sorrow for her. No mere animal, however extraordinary, could hope to manage a litter of mutants, even with ideal circumstances, which these were not. It was a problem that Raph had not anticipated.

But of course Leo had recognized the possibility.

The wolfdog was no longer looking at Raph. She was gazing past him, across the enclosure, at Leo and the pups. Leo had reached the gate and opened it. Her body limp, but gaze intense, the wolfdog observed this. Though none of her muscles tensed, Raph felt her eagerness for the open gate, which seemed to exert a pull on her spirit stronger even than her hunger or her need to guard her pups.

More than life, more than breath, the wolfdog yearned to be free. Raph could feel it rolling off her in tidal waves, a feeling so strong it almost made him dizzy. In the moment, he felt he knew her better than he had ever known anyone in his life, that he understood her every thought and impulse.

Wondering, doubting, but compelled to obey the directives of this feeling, Raph let go of the wolfdog's collar, took his weight off of her, released his hold on her head and took a step back. He knew the consequences of a wrong guess. If he guessed wrongly, she would not go for him, but she would go after Leo. She would maul him to take her pups back, or he would have to kill her to defend himself.

But the wolfdog did not immediately get up. She lay on her side for a lengthy second, then rolled onto her belly, her head still on the ground, her eyes on the open gate.

Still unsure of himself, but trusting to the touch of instinct that had caught hold of him, Raph turned away from her and walked in the direction of the gate, taking his time to get there. When he reached it, he looked back and found the wolfdog had followed him, and stood about a foot away now. She looked at the gate, then up at him, cocking her head inquiringly.

The depth in her quiet gaze was unnerving. But it was clear she had read him as easily as he had read her. She understood, just as he did, what must now happen. He had bested her, and so now she yielded to him, knowing her fate would be decided by something he was going to do, and waiting patiently for him to do it. Raph shivered, not from cold but from some creeping sense of the known and unknown.

He moved through the gate, and the wolfdog followed after. He led the way to the barn, where Leo had taken the pups to. The wolfdog went with him, her eyes never leaving him, not even to rove over the long coveted forest surrounding them. As Leo had said, she would not leave without her pups.


	22. Chapter 22

In the barn, Raph found more than just his brothers and the pups. In a wire cage on a workbench, Spot was sitting, looking deeply concerned about all of this. Seeing the wolfdog trailing Raph, Spot's eyes bugged out, his fur fuzzed and he hissed loudly, which of course drew attention.

"I've said it before and I'll say it again," he spluttered, "You're completely insane. It's not crazy enough to come back here knowing that the humans want you dead, you've got to enter a ring with a starving predator, steal her kids and then turn her loose!" he paced a circle in his small cage, "You may be able to talk, but you've got to be the dumbest mutant I've ever seen!"

"Nice to see you too," Raph remarked dryly.

Leo had sensed not only Raph behind him, but the wolfdog as well, a fraction before Spot had hissed at them. His first response was a look of startled alarm, and then a depth of understanding. It reassured Raph to know Leo saw the same thing he did in the eyes of the wolfdog. And it was especially reassuring to know there would be no conflict between them over what would happen next.

The wolfdog started towards Spot's cage, then pulled up short when she heard her pups squeaking to her left. She turned towards them, and the pile of hay Leo had placed them in. Leo stepped back in case his proximity made her aggressive or hesitant, but she ignored him completely.

The barn was the warmest place Donnie and Mikey could find, and its doors could be closed. Unless she dug her way out, the wolfdog could be kept confined to the barn. They hadn't planned for her to have that much time. But now Leo saw she would not be attempting to escape at all.

She stood over her pups, sniffing each in turn, and the pups squeaked and squirmed as her whiskers and breath brushed their fur. Then she turned and lifted her head, looking at Raph expectantly.

"Did Raph just become the wolf whisperer while we weren't looking?" Mikey inquired, then added brightly, "That would be a _great_ TV show."

"No," Raph replied, meeting the wolfdog's gaze steadily, "She and I just get each other."

"Funny, two seconds ago, I thought she was trying to eat you," Donnie remarked.

"She was," Raph said neutrally.

"Does she understand what we have to do here?" Leo asked.

"She was smart enough not to drink the mutagen in the first place," Raph said confidently, "She knows why she's got to drink it now."

"Wait what?" Mikey asked.

"For once I'm with him," Donnie said, pointing at Mikey alongside him, "What are you talking about?"

Leo knelt down so that he could look at the wolfdog and her pups at her level, explaining, "The pups need their mother. Can you imagine what it would have been like for us to have a non-mutant raise us? She'll never be able to control them as they get bigger and more powerful, and she won't be able to keep up with their mental development. They'll outgrow her before they outgrow their need for someone to look out for them. She won't be able to keep them safe."

"So we should adopt them!" Mikey concluded.

"No, Mikey," Leo said, looking over his shoulder at his little brother, completely unafraid to turn his back on the wolfdog now he'd looked her in the eye, "A New York sewer may be fine for us, we're city turtles raised by a rat. But these are wolf pups."

"Technically, wolfdog pups," Donnie pointed out.

"Either way, the sewer's no place for them, and neither is the city," Leo said, "There's no place for them in our world. Besides, none of us would make good parents. We've got enough on our plates as it is. Our father adopted us, but these pups already have a mother," Leo gestured behind him at the wolfdog, who seemed to be following the conversation intently, though she couldn't possibly understand all the words which were being exchanged between the turtles.

"You're as crazy as he is," Spot informed Leo, with a nod at Raph, "You mutate that bitch and she'll either die in the process or kill you before it's all over!"

"Spot has a point, actually," Donnie remarked softly, "She's not in good shape to begin with. Mutation may kill her. Then where will her pups be?"

"That's her choice to make," Leo said decisively.

"I think I have a better idea," Mikey said.

* * *

Astonishingly to all, Mikey _did_ actually have a good idea, though it took considerable doing to separate the actual idea from the elaborate fantasy he built around it; fantasy involving a pizza slumber party, the sudden and inexplicable arrival of a magical wolf god, and heroically written folk songs. But the idea itself, which was to build up the wolfdog's strength by bringing her somewhere safe and feeding her up until she regained a healthy weight before offering her mutagen, was a surprisingly sound one.

"Mikey had a good idea?" Donnie said doubtfully to Leo.

Leo shrugged, surprised as anyone, "Mikey had a good idea."

"Okay, that one's the smartest one of you there is," Spot said from his cage, "But, uh, how do you geniuses plan to explain it to her majesty?"

The cat had a point. It was one thing to ask the wolfdog to put up with them until they finished what they had to do here, and it would be amazing if she would take the mutagen through some mysterious understanding of what it did. But it was quite another to ask her to accept that she and her pups would be loaded up in the Shellraiser and taken somewhere else, where they would have to wait and live as if they were captives once more. It was surely too much to ask her to understand or accept.

"She'll figure it out for herself," Raph replied calmly, "She was willing to check that pen every night for the rest of her life, just waiting for her chance to get out. She's patient enough to put up with us for a few days. Especially since we have something worthwhile to offer her."

"How does she know that?" Donnie wanted to know.

"Does it matter?" Raph asked.

"No," Leo answered for Donnie, "All that matters is that she does know. Change of plans, guys. Mikey, you finish the headcount out in the pens. Donnie, you get the Shellraiser and bring it back here. Wait at the end of the road, don't bring it onto the property. Raph and I will bring her and her pups to you. Once we start letting mutants loose, we don't want her getting caught up in it if things get messy."

"Oh, they'll get messy," Spot predicted.

"And take that cat with you," Leo told Donnie, "We don't want any big mutants mistaking him for their dinner."

"Hey, did I say I wanted in on this venture?" Spot asked, and glared at Donnie as the turtle picked his cage up, "Hey, watch what you're doing! Put me down, you big ugly reptile!"

Donnie ignored him, exiting the barn wordlessly. Mikey followed, but peeled off towards the pens. Raph and Leo were left alone with the wolfdog and her pups.

"Well," Leo sighed, still kneeling in front of the wolfdog, "I guess we'd better get started."

The wolfdog bobbed her head and tilted an ear. When Leo started to reach for a pup, she showed her teeth in warning, but did not growl. Leo hesitated, pulled back, and thought it over.

"Maybe Spot had a point," Leo said.

"You're over-thinking things," Raph replied, brushing past him and crouching down.

Matter-of-factly, he picked up a pup, ignoring the wolfdog's flash of teeth. He handed the pup back to Leo, and picked up a second pup. He stood and the turtles stepped back, leaving the third for the wolfdog. The pups were so tiny that Leo had been able to carry all three, but he sensed that Raph was doing something to communicate their intent to the wolfdog. It didn't quite make sense to Leo, but he respected that Raph and this wolfdog had some kind of connection, some mutual comprehension of each other. Leo's understanding was much more limited, but there was definitely something familiar in her gaze, something that he felt could be trusted.

"C'mon, momma dog," Raph said, "Let's find you somewhere warmer, and maybe get you some food."

As if this was an instruction she had received every day of her life, instead of one she had probably never heard the like of before, the wolfdog picked up her remaining pup and trotted over to the barn door, where she waited for the turtles to catch up, her eyes on the pups they carried.

"Careful you don't upset yours," Raph warned, "Keep it out of the wind."

Leo understood. If the pup got upset, it would start squealing in distress, and the wolfdog's trust in them could go out the window in an instant. Then they'd be back to her trying to kill them. Carefully, turning his shoulder into the wind to keep himself between it and the pup, Leo opened the barn door and headed out. Raph followed, and the wolfdog trailed them.

The driveway was long and winding, but the wolfdog never strayed. The Shellraiser was waiting for them by the time they reached where the driveway met the road. Donnie opened the door for them, and Leo led the way inside. Raph followed. The wolfdog hesitated, gathered herself as though to jump a wide chasm, and sprang into the vehicle. After the cold of the outdoors, the interior of the Shellraiser was wonderfully warm, though Donnie had the heater low so the temperature change wouldn't be too shocking.

The wolfdog immediately climbed to the back of the Shellraiser and set her pup down, then looked around until she spotted a folded blanket, which she grabbed in her teeth and pulled to the floor, then began to diligently paw into a nest shape. Leo and Raph set the pups they'd carried down next to her, and she acknowledged them only with a grunt, before continuing her nest-making.

Donnie closed the door and got the Shellraiser moving again.

"Now what?" Spot was out of his cage, sitting up on the dash.

"Now we move the Shellraiser out of sight," Leo said, "You probably shouldn't stay in here by yourself. So wait outside the Shellraiser, and we'll be back soon."

"What are you gonna do?" Spot wanted to know.

"We're going to free the mutants," Leo replied, "And then we're going to call the authorities in to deal with the rest. The non-mutants should provide plenty of evidence of animal abuse, and that should be enough to get Laurenson out of our way for the foreseeable future."

"That is a _stupid_ plan," Spot said.

"That's what you said when I went over the fence," Raph reminded him.

"And you almost died, didn't you?" Spot spat back.

Leo and Donnie exchanged a look, but they said nothing. Their brother wasn't ready to talk about what had happened to him, and they were learning to take Spot's seemingly eternal pessimistic criticism with a grain of salt, so they weren't sure how accurate his assessment might be.

"But I didn't," Raph pointed out.

"You would have, if not for me!"

"But I _didn't_," Raph insisted.

"You're impossible!" Spot growled, puffing out his whiskers.

"I love you too," Raph said, in a tone of sarcasm, though both Leo and Donnie could see a certain honesty in his eyes, suggesting this cat had done more than just go around insulting him during his captivity, and maybe there was something to what Spot had said about saving Raph's life.

By the time Donnie parked the Shellraiser, the wolfdog had made herself quite comfortable in the back. She lay in the folds of the blanket, curling her body around her pups, who were trying unsuccessfully to nurse. The wolfdog's body was too depleted to produce adequate milk for them, which was actually a more physically taxing proposition than pregnancy had been.

Raph went to her and knelt down, though he didn't quite dare try to pet her.

"We'll be back soon, momma dog," he promised her, "And then we'll see what we can do to fix this."

The wolfdog listened intently, then dropped her head onto her paws with a sigh, as if she understood that she would have to wait a little longer for the much-needed meal she'd been promised, and as if she understood that she had been promised a meal in the first place.

"I'm beginning to think she must have been somebody's pet at some point," Leo said to Donnie in a low voice, "It seems like she understands at least half the things we say to her."

"She understands Raph anyway," Donnie replied, reminding Leo, "He's always had a way with animals. Especially the not-so-cuddly ones. And remember, he spent several days up close and personal with her. I expect they know each other rather well by now."

"I suppose," Leo admitted, but he couldn't shake the uncanny feeling the wolfdog gave him every time she looked at him, which actually felt more like she was looking _through_ him.

The three turtles and Spot exited the vehicle. The cat climbed up onto the roof and crouched there.

"You wait for us to get back," Raph admonished.

"Yeah, yeah," Spot grunted, wiping a paw across his face, "_If_ you get back."

"Keep up the pessimism, Spotted Cat," Raph called back over his shoulder.

"He may have a point," Donnie ventured quietly when they were out of earshot, "Things have been quiet so far, but if we start letting mutants out, there's no telling what might happen. They might start trying to kill each other, or us. And if they start making a lot of noise-"

"We'll worry about that if it happens," Leo said, "Now, look, we know there are different kinds of mutants. We'll communicate with the ones we can, let them know we're trying to help and that they need to be quiet. The rest we'll just have to deal with."

"And what about the non-mutants?" Donnie asked.

Before Leo could answer, Raph threw an arm over Donnie's shoulders and gave his chest a rather rough pat, "Calm down, Donnie. We got this."


	23. Chapter 23

"'We got this'!?" Donnie shouted mockingly as he dodged the snap-whip of the lizard's tail.

"Shut up," Raph answered, ducking the surprisingly fast swipe of a clawed front foot, dropping to his knees in the snow and leaning back in order to do so.

Several of the mutants could talk just as Spot did, and they were very understanding and grateful to be set free and to have their collars taken off. The majority of them had been exotic pets their owners had gotten rid of when they got too big to be convenient, but some had been caught in the wild. All, Leo hoped, had been imbued with enough strength and intelligence to survive on their own.

But then came the mutants which didn't talk, either because they couldn't or because they did not wish to. In their presently weak and miserable state, most were passive enough. Some exited when the gate was opened for them, others took some prodding. Leo and Donnie had done most of the collar removing on these animals, because they each had reach with sharp implements. Still, in some cases, they hadn't gotten more than halfway through the leather before the animal bolted. All was going more or less swimmingly up until they got to the pen where Raph had been held.

Even if he hadn't known which pen Raph had been in, Leo could have recognized it by the dark look which came into Raph's eyes when he looked at the pen, the way he unconsciously bared his teeth at it like it was an old enemy, and the fact that he hung back with a low growl when Leo moved forward to break open the lock to release the pen's one remaining captive.

The lizard had lifted its head, flicking its tongue at them, but it hadn't gotten down from its wooden platform, so Leo had gone in to give the thing a bit of a nudge and cut its collar off.

"I wouldn't," was Raph's only warning.

Knowing Raph tended to have this immediate effect on people, which was that they took an instant dislike to him and wanted to dismember him, Leo didn't take the warning as seriously as perhaps he should have. Next thing he knew, the lizard had leaped for him with a terrible shriek, crashing into him with its full weight, forcing the breath out of him.

In a flash, Leo's brothers were at the lizard, first distracting it from Leo himself, and then trying to drive it backwards. But the lizard would not be driven. It sat on Leo and thrashed around to defend itself unpredictably. It was tremendously heavy, and Leo found himself sinking into the churned mud-snow slush that filled the pen, which prevented him from getting any good leverage to do anything to remove the animal or get out from under it by himself.

Seeing the lizard wasn't going to get off, the brothers surrounded it, each looking for an opening to strike it in such a way that it would be either intimidated or injured enough to consider backing off. Each took his turn to make a rush at it, and when it turned on him, the brother opposite him would make a move. But the lizard seemed to see them all, and know their game somehow.

Pinned under it, Leo could feel the animal was pitifully thin and undoubtedly slowed by extreme cold. He shuddered to think what it could do with a good meal and a warm sewer.

It was during this time that Donnie and Raph made their exchange.

When he had ducked, Raph had also slid in close, and he gave the lizard a good poke in the flank with his sai. The lizard responded by opening its mouth with a vile hiss and snapping at him. Its teeth met on air just shy of his neck. A look of surprise entered its eyes as Raph took the opportunity to wrap his arms around the lizard's jaws, preventing it from opening them again.

"No collar this time, huh?" Raph growled, eye to eye with the lizard now.

The lizard tossed its head, but couldn't dislodge Raph. It tried to claw him, but both Donnie and Mikey ran interference, blocking the attempt. With a violent heave, it got off Leo, launching itself into a powerful maneuver which in a crocodile was known as a Death Roll. It clipped Mikey on the way, knocking him down as it rolled by, carrying Raph with it.

Leo gasped, relieved to have some air back, even though the cold seared his lungs. Donnie helped him up. At the same time, Mikey was getting up, futilely trying to wipe the mud off. In another moment, there was the harsh banging noise of turtle shell hitting galvanized steel, as the lizard threw itself -and consequently Raph, still clinging to its face- against the fence.

The other three scrambled to aid him, each of them trying to latch on to a threatening spot on the lizard. Leo and Donnie took a set of claws on either side, though they could only hold the front ones effectively, the back ones couldn't seem to reach them, and holding the fronts kept the lizard from clawing at Raph (or anybody else). Mikey jumped the lizard's tail. The tail snapped back and forth violently, and Mikey yelled, but refused to let go. Thrashing back and forth, the lizard got itself off the fence, and then propelled itself toward the open gate using only its back legs, hauling all four turtles with it as if their weight was nothing at all.

Leo realized what the lizard was trying for and yelled as they approached the gate, "Get clear!"

There were support poles on either side of the gate, and the lizard was big enough to throw its legs out and smash both Leo and Donnie against the steel poles. Leo and Donnie peeled off before it could do that. Raph was next, as the lizard tossed its head back and tried to scrape him off on a pole, he leaped clear and grabbed onto the wire mesh of the fence and gate, hanging several feet up, looking down to see if the lizard meant to try and take a snap at him. Mikey was last, though it couldn't be said for sure whether he let go or the lizard merely lashed its tail powerfully enough to fling him across the pen.

Whatever the case, the animal continued through the gate, and slithered off into the dark, dropping the leather collar partway across the yard. Apparently, Raph had popped the lock on it while holding onto the lizard's head. The rest was now up to the lizard.

Breathlessly, the brothers regrouped. They grabbed onto each other's arms and shoulders, but only briefly, as if assuring themselves and each other that they were all still in one piece. Then they moved forward with the plan. All the mutants were free now, and they were just going to take a tour around the property to make sure all the mutants had gotten clear of the area before they moved on.

Though each part of the plan had seemed to rush by thus far, it had actually taken most of the night to get all the mutants out, especially since they had to stop and wait in the shadows whenever the animals started getting too stirred up. They didn't want to attract any undue attention from the house.

They weren't here to fight.

Satisfied that they'd done all they could, the turtles returned to full ninja mode, gliding silently into the shadows, which welcomed them like the old friends they were.

Then Donnie made a call.

* * *

There was a surprisingly swift response to the call Donnie had made. Sunrise was still a long way off when an vehicle with an SPCA label on it pulled up. A woman got out, shone her light around at the animals, and made a call of her own. A police vehicle, along with several more SPCA vehicles, some of them pulling trailers, others containing crates for the animals, arrived in less than a half hour.

Despite all the animals the turtles had released, there remained dozens upon dozens of non-mutants, all housed in the same appalling conditions, some whose collars had become partially embedded in their necks, others with injuries and infections of various sorts. At a glance, all were muddy, and thin, any with enough hair were heavily matted, several had lost patches of fur due to one thing or another.

In truth, there was no real reason for the turtles to hang around and watch, but they all felt responsible, and were unwilling to leave until they were certain that none of the animals would be left behind this time. They also wanted to see to it that nobody in that house got the chance to escape.

The four of them were ranged around the property, perched in trees or concealed in underbrush, slipping away as needed before a flashlight's shine could reveal their presence, which wasn't that difficult because no one was actually looking for or expecting to find anything like them out there.

It clearly concerned the officers and investigators that there were empty pens which had clearly had occupants up until recently, but that was evidence the turtles couldn't help leaving behind. They just had to hope that it would be concluded that the animals had either died, been killed or else released, and that the officers and investigators would eventually give up looking.

The turtles were too far back to hear the words exchanged between the police and Laurenson when he answered the door, but it was fairly clear that Laurenson was in a belligerent mood, and the policemen were having none of it. It was sort of disappointing that Laurenson appeared to be the only one in the house, but the turtles supposed they couldn't expect to have everything.

When he saw that his animals were being removed, Laurenson began to get agitated, and eventually became violent, at which point he was arrested, just as the turtles had hoped he would be. As he was led away, he was shouting loud enough for all to hear about vital research and how the animals here were his property. He claimed that he had medical records for them, and they all were wearing collars, and he was their caretaker, and that meant they belonged to him and he could do what he wanted with them.

It seemed the police and SPCA didn't agree with his assessment of circumstances, though they expressed interest in seeing those records, at which time it became evident -though not yet proven- that the vet he'd taken them to was probably not licensed. Of course, the turtles could have told that. Real doctors -for humans or animals- didn't treat their patients as Raph had been treated.

The removal of the animals was a time consuming process. Each one had to be wrangled, and then photographs were taken from every possible angle, and then each animal was put into a crate or trailer, depending on its size. Some of the animals were too dangerous to be handled directly, and a scant few even had to be sedated in order to move them. But for the most part it was a surprisingly organized and peaceful process, just as releasing most of the mutants had been for the turtles earlier on.

Still, it was a long one, because the animals were many, and some were skittish of being caught and handled at first. And they all had to have tags of various sorts attached to them, presumably to identify something about them or where they'd been taken from or something, the turtles didn't know.

In fact, the whole concept of the SPCA was pretty foreign to them, it being well outside their experience or fields of interest.

At last, the final animal was loaded up, some pieces of evidence were bagged, and the vehicles and trailers rolled out. Only once the last truck and trailer was out of sight did the turtles regroup in the yard, and conduct a tour first of the pens and then the now-deserted house. Even though the humans had double checked their own work, the turtles couldn't help giving the pens another look, just to be sure that nobody got left behind. The inspection of the house was for another reason entirely.

There was a reason the turtles had remained behind. Things had worked out as they'd hoped, which was that nobody went and inspected the house. They didn't have a warrant, and Laurenson had said there were no animals inside anyway. The turtles wanted to be sure, but they were looking for something of even greater import. If there was any mutagen left on the property, it was inside the house somewhere, and the turtles were going to find and retrieve it.

After all, that was their primary ongoing mission.

Donnie found what they were looking for in a study which had been converted into a makeshift laboratory. The turtles tried not to look at or think about the equipment in there, much less what it was probably for. Instead, they focused on the canisters Donnie had found.

"Several empties, two fulls and one that's about half emptied," Donnie reported.

"Take it all," Leo ordered unnecessarily, "And look around for any records. We can't do anything about any other sites he might have been working from, but I don't want any trace of mutants left anywhere in this place, least of all us."

"Look for a computer then," Donnie said, "Hopefully he stayed logged in to his blog and we can delete the whole thing. I doubt it gets a lot of traffic, and we're not on it, but those dogs sure are."

"Right," Leo nodded, and the turtles fanned out once more.

Before long, in what should have been the garage, Leo found a couple of computers which seemed to be entirely focused on filming and storing events outside the house. Leo hadn't noticed any cameras, but they were apparently there. On one screen was a series of windows, each showing a view of the outdoors. But on another, it was clear that Laurenson or someone else had been reviewing old footage, specifically of Raph. In fact, there was a separate file marked Red (which was what Laurenson had called Raph), with several film clips in it. A kind of morbid curiosity overcame Leo, and he clicked on the first of the clips in the file and watched it.

There was no sound, but it became plain that this was footage of Raph's arrival. Leo felt a bit ill just watching it. Even with distant, grainy footage, Leo could read his brother's obvious and extreme distress with the situation. He watched Raph lash out, then begin to use his head, assessing the situation. Leo stopped the clip before it finished. He didn't want to see more.

He told himself that it was over now. Whatever had happened to Raph, it didn't matter now, so there was no point in Leo's looking at it. When he was ready, Raph would tell Leo himself what had happened. But... what if Raph was never ready? And what if there _was_ something important? Something that Raph would never be willing to share?

Almost against his will, Leo found himself clicking on another clip, and watching his brother nearly get torn apart by the enormous lizard they had just successfully released into the wild.


	24. Chapter 24

"What the-... Leo, have you been crying?" Donnie asked, caught between concern and bafflement.

"What? No. Of course not," Leo retorted.

"You certainly look like you have," Donnie said.

"Yeah, dude, your eyes are all red," Mikey observed.

It was of course quite broadly daylight outside now, but what had given Leo away was actually the lights that had been left on in Laurenson's living room, which was furnished in a deceptively normal style, all things considered.

Leo threw Mikey a glare, and refuted Donnie's assessment, saying, "Don't be ridiculous. I just got something in my eye is all," hurriedly he changed the subject, "You guys find anything besides the canisters?"

"Not really," Donnie replied, "Looks like he kept everything in his lab."

"And the garage," Leo replied, gesturing over his shoulder, "Computers with film records from security cameras. We'll get the cameras on the way out. I already dealt with the computers."

"Leo! One of those may have been the one he wrote his blog from!" Donnie scolded.

"Not likely," Leo said, "They didn't have internet that I could tell."

"Hey, D!" Raph called, coming down the stairs from the second floor, "Catch!"

Donnie looked up in time to see a laptop, and to catch it as Raph tossed it to him.

"Hey! Careful! It's not a football!" Donnie objected, "You could've broken it!"

"_Could_ have," Raph emphasized, "But _didn't_."

Donnie growled in annoyance, but opened up the laptop, which fortunately didn't have much in the way of protection. Shortly he found the bookmarked page in the internet browser that linked to the website for Laurenson's blog. The blog objected to being deleted without Donnie entering the password, but he managed to finagle a way around it.

"Now, we just need to delete anything on it that could-" Donnie didn't get to finish what he was saying as Raph rammed one of his sais straight through the middle of the laptop, and the other through its screen, then pulled, effectively yanking it apart.

"Raph!" Donnie snapped, "You can't just delete information by breaking the computer. The wrong piece of this left intact could just be plugged into another computer, and then anything that was on this laptop is free for the taking!"

Raph stabbed a sai through another portion of the laptop and said, "So I don't leave anything intact."

"Oh that's real mature," Donnie said, stepping back and crossing his arms to watch Raph demolish the laptop one piece at a time until all that was left were fragments.

When Raph was satisfied that he had sufficiently destroyed the laptop, he too stepped back.

"Happy now?" Raph asked Donnie, then glanced at Leo, "Can we go?"

"Yes," Leo said, "We can go."

They didn't though, at least not immediately. As a group, they took one more sweep through the house and around the property, this time spotting the cameras and dismantling them with extreme prejudice. Donnie and Mikey exchanged significant looks when they saw the computers in the garage that Leo had "dealt with." He'd done more damage per square inch than the rest of them had done in the entire house, including the damage Raph had done to the laptop. If Raph noticed anything odd about that, he didn't share it with anyone.

Only after they'd made certain of their thoroughness did they finally go. By then, it was getting dark again, and they were tired. The rest had all just been hard work, though no harder than their usual, but the lizard had battered and bruised them not inconsiderably, so they were sore as well as weary.

"Hey, you didn't die after all!" Spot called to them from atop the Shellraiser, "Will wonders never cease!" he hopped down onto one of the front wheels, sat up and wiped his whiskers, "She's destroyed everything inside by now, I'm sure. Just so you know."

The Shellraiser seemed quiet, but Raph went first anyway. He and the others had almost forgotten the wolfdog in the hours since they'd seen her.

She hadn't exactly destroyed _everything_, but she had definitely sniffed out anything that resembled food, and dug, clawed, chewed and tugged her way to it, wherever it was. Thus the destruction was extensive, but hardly surprising. The wolfdog had simply done what she always had at night in the pen, she had roamed the area in search of food. But apparently not, in this case, escape.

Now she'd curled herself comfortably on the blanket again, looking just as though she hadn't moved an inch the whole time they were gone. She thumped her tail once when Raph climbed into the Shellraiser, but otherwise she ignored him, preoccupied with giving one of her pups a wash with her tongue.

"Sorry we took so long, momma," Raph told the wolfdog, as if he expected her to understand.

She did not look up, nor even turn an ear in his direction, so he shrugged at his brothers as they climbed aboard. Donnie took in the damage to the Shellraiser and the equipment stored within it with horror, then he swallowed, took a deep breath and sucked it up without saying a word.

Mikey wasn't so passive, "Hey! Quit namin' stuff without me!"

"What are you talking about, Mikey?" Raph asked, evidently genuinely confused.

"That!" Mikey gestured wildly to the wolfdog, who looked up in response to the sudden movement, "What you did, just now!"

"Mikey," Raph was evidently too tired for a good argument, "I just called her momma because she has babies. That's not her name."

Mikey stood there, blinking for a moment, then he said, "Oh. Never mind then."

Raph shook his head, went to the wolfdog, knelt down and popped the lock on her collar, then unbuckled and removed it without ceremony. She sniffed the collar disinterestedly as he laid it aside, then watched as Raph retreated, found the nearest seat, and collapsed into it with a sigh.

"I wonder if anybody around here sells pizza," Mikey mused, flopping down on the floor with his back against Raph's seat, "I'm starving."

"Out in the middle of nowhere?" Donnie scoffed, "I doubt it."

"And we should stay out of inhabited areas," Leo said, "At least until we've gotten some rest. So dinner will just have to wait, maybe until we get home."

Mikey had closed his eyes when he sat down, but he opened them to glare at the wolfdog and say irritably, "Good one, Momma Dog," to which he added, "Ow! Hey, what was that for!?" when Raph smacked him on the back of the head for it.

But it was Leo who responded, more gently than Raph would have, "You would have eaten everything in sight if you were half as hungry as she is, Mikey. You can almost count her ribs from here."

"If not for all the mud and matted fur, that is," Donnie added tiredly, having found a seat of his own.

"Don't get any ideas," Spot recommended, having resumed his perch on the dash, "You try to cut her hair, and she'll be having turtle tartare for a second course."

"Turtle what now?" Mikey inquired.

"He means raw turtle," Raph replied, "And I don't think he's kidding."

"I never kid about food," Spot said almost indignantly.

* * *

Leo woke a few hours later, not fully remembering having gone to sleep, or even where he was. He'd been having a nightmare, though not so vivid as though he'd had when Raph was missing. It seemed mostly to be the byproduct of what he'd seen the day before, in particular the clips he'd watched.

It was fortunate there wasn't an alarm system to let anyone know that Raph had been breaking out, and it was also pure luck that nobody happened to look at the footage until later, at which time it had been cut and labeled. Leo had watched only a portion of Raph's escape, a minute or so of the beginning, and also its dramatic conclusion. By the length of the clip, he knew how many hours Raph had spent painstakingly working on the fence to get out, something he'd managed only by the skin of his teeth.

Or more accurately, the skin of his neck, and Spot's shoulder as well, for it was the cat who'd kept him from killing himself on the barbed wire in the end.

Sleep had woven the things he'd seen into a nightmare which made him wish he'd not watched any of the footage. But at least now he knew. The knowing was better somehow, no matter how terrible it seemed. Especially as seeing what had happened told him Raph was unlikely to ever talk about it.

What was there to say except that it had been Hell?

Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Leo looked around and saw that the others were still asleep. They hadn't managed to slide into a pile as they had before, however. Raph and Donnie were still in the seats they'd claimed almost the moment they'd climbed into the Shellraiser Mikey was still on the floor, sitting up and leaned against Raph, using his brother's knee as an awkward pillow. Spot was curled up on the dash, snoring softly to himself, the tip of his tail flicking periodically.

But the wolfdog was awake. She had her head lifted and ears tilted towards Leo, her eyes seeming to shine with bright inquiry at him, yet also to look right through him, not as if she could not see him, but as if he were so insignificant that his existence was hardly relevant to her. There was a curious innocence in the canine face combined with an ancient and yet ageless wisdom, a knowing without knowing that was at once utterly alien yet wholly familiar to Leo.

He couldn't imagine being locked in a cage with her and having her consider how edible he might be. The lizard was huge and bad tempered and powerful, but the look in the wolfdog's eyes bordered on terrifying, yet Leo couldn't quite pinpoint why that was.

Finally, she snorted once, put her head down, and snuggled her lower jaw into a comfortable fold of blanket, her ears swiveling to the side as her interest in Leo's activity decreased. Yet her haunting gaze was still fixed on him, without wariness or malice, but an indefinable something that kept him uneasy.

Deciding he wouldn't be getting any more sleep, Leo decided to start the journey back home. He was sitting in the driver's seat anyhow. When he started the Shellraiser, his brothers briefly stirred, questioning what was going on. Seeing it was only Leo at the wheel starting them towards home and nothing more disastrous, they collectively went back to sleep. Spot didn't even stir.

Leo wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep, but it was dark out, either still or again. He preferred it that way, and hoped to be home before it got light. They'd been spending a lot of time in the open during the daylight hours, and the risk of that bothered Leo.

It was funny, though. Raph had seemingly gone through more than any of them, but his sleep hadn't seemed to be much troubled since they'd gotten him back, whereas Leo had been constantly plagued with nightmares and unease, and he knew that was also true of Mikey to a lesser extent. He could never tell if Donnie was up all night inventing because of nightmares or because he'd simply gotten lost in a project. But Raph had spent lots of time sleeping, and mostly peacefully as far as Leo could tell. It was as if the whole ordeal didn't even really bother him.

That didn't seem possible. Raph had been wounded, poisoned, locked up, sick and nearly died at least a couple of times, all too far away from his brothers for them to help him. And yet, it seemed like none of that had left any lasting effect on him, except for the scar he'd be sporting around his neck for awhile. Even that wouldn't be very noticeable once it finished healing unless you looked closely, though of course it would probably stand out to Leo even once the marks disappeared completely. He knew how much Raph had hated that collar, and how much trouble and pain it had caused him besides.

_Never again_, he told himself, though of course he couldn't predict the future, or stop every bad thing from happening. But, he was still sure in his own mind. So long as he had anything to say about it, his brother would never wear a collar again, no matter what happened.

After he'd been driving for awhile, Leo felt the road seeming to unroll ahead and the steady rumble of the Shellraiser's engine lulling him into a state of relaxation, wearing the edge off the fragmented memories of the nightmare which had awakened him.

However, it had a very different effect on Raph. Though the ride out had not bothered him, perhaps because even his subconscious was focused on the task at hand, the ride back stirred the memory of the van ride he'd taken, and that memory built the foundation for a dream which was bad enough that he awoke with a start, his eyes flashing open as he threw himself to the opposite side of the Shellraiser with a snarl. When he moved, he of course upset Mikey, and he wound up disturbing Donnie as well because he'd crashed into his brother when he hurled himself sideways.

The cries from the back distracted Leo, and he tried to look back, unconsciously turning the wheel of the Shellraiser and sending it across to the wrong side of the road, before realizing his mistake, over-compensating in the opposite direction and driving it almost into a ditch before coming to a stop.

For a moment, Raph didn't seem aware of it, crouched trembling and gasping on the floor of the Shellraiser, his eyes white, teeth bared at some unseen enemy.

The wolfdog was on her feet at once, a growl in her throat, a growl which drew Raph's attention. He stared at her without apparent recognition or comprehension, and she stared back, head lowered and fangs showing to their roots. Up on the dash, Spot arched his back and fuzzed out with a hiss.

"Whoa, easy Raphy boy," Mikey said, crawling over and taking his brother by the shoulder and back of his shell, "It was just a dream, bro."

Raph flinched at his brother's touch, a sound in his throat that sounded disturbingly similar to the wolfdog's, his inability to immediately recognize and respond to Mikey testament to the depth and darkness of whatever he'd seen in his mind's eye. But after a moment he blinked, and the green of his irises showed again. He blinked at Mikey, then at the wolfdog, then at Mikey again, clearly confused and maybe a little bit embarrassed.

"I... uh..." he began, then trailed off helplessly.

"Forget it," Mikey said, patting his brother's shoulder, "Just forget it. We're goin' home now."

For a moment, Raph remained tense, then he relaxed and leaned into his brother's supporting arms, letting Mikey draw him into a proper hug, one which Leo and Donnie shortly joined without a word.

There wasn't anything else that needed to be said.


	25. Chapter 25

Despite Mikey's other name suggestions, and Raph's assertion that it wasn't a name, they all took to calling the wolfdog Momma or Momma Dog. Though most dogs would likely turn their nose up at a sewer, Momma had definitely seen much worse than the lair, and she immediately commandeered a corner of the living room for herself, fetching blankets and pillows from around the lair that caught her fancy with which she made a nest for her three pups. She seldom left her nest, actually preferring to let the turtles or Splinter bring food to her instead of leaving her pups unattended even for a moment.

Momma and Splinter had had a curious effect upon one another, but hardly a surprising one. When he had seen his boys come back, one of them carrying Spot, the other three each carrying a puppy, Splinter had inquired as to what they were doing, but before they could answer, Momma had come trailing after them, having briefly become distracted by something she heard in the tunnels and so lagging a bit behind. She stopped the moment she saw Splinter, her head lifted, tail lowered.

The two had regarded each other in utter unmoving silence for what seemed an eternity, before Splinter finally made a gesture of welcome with one hand, which Momma seemed to understand implicitly, despite the fact that it was thoroughly unlikely that any rat had ever waved her into his parlor before.

In fact, she and Splinter seemed to understand one another at all times. The rare moment she left the nest with her pups was to come into the kitchen and sit beside Splinter when he and the turtles were eating. She never begged from the table, though they would have been pushovers if she had. She simply sat and regarded them as if they were an interesting mystery, but she acted as if she knew Splinter, as if she had always known him, in fact. And Splinter responded to her in much the same fashion. Perhaps it was recognition of old grief in each other's eyes, and a shared parental bond.

The turtles didn't wonder, as it felt quite natural that it be so. In the meantime, their own lives had resumed pretty much as normal, dealing with whatever problems the New York streets threw at them, finding more mutagen canisters, and spending their rapidly dwindling free time on cartoons.

As for Spot, he slowly drifted out of their lives, gradually spending more and more time away from the lair. At first he was a little shy, but soon he found the back alleys of New York were to his liking, particularly with their preponderance of pests. He had a particular thing for squirrels in the park, but the turtles suspected he also went after pigeons, rats and anything else that crossed his path. They were happier not knowing, and it was easier not to know when he didn't come home. It was clear to all that Spot would do just fine out there on his own.

It was not long before Momma had gained significant weight. She also did a considerable amount of self-grooming. Once out of the pen, she had little trouble picking the mud and mats out of her fur. Half-wild to begin with, the matter of cleaning herself up was one she was quite able to deal with. It startled the brothers one day to come home and find what they at first took to be a white dog in their living room. With all the mud, Momma's color had been anyone's guess. But when she took a short jaunt out to some water source, getting properly soaked and then dried off, she turned a surprisingly pure white.

Even clean, however, it was impossible to figure what she was crossed with. Her fur seemed a little bit long for a wolf, but none of the turtles was an expert in the subject. Her eyes were brown, but with a strain of yellow to them. The only real proof she was a wolfdog lay in their own instincts. They just _knew_ she wasn't a dog, in the same way that they knew themselves to be turtles.

The pups were growing fast, but they basically looked like little black and white burritos with legs. The only major sign they were mutants was that their eyes had opened when they were only a few days old, and their back feet were larger than their front, which seemed destined to become more like hands.

One night, Momma came into Donnie's lab right after the turtles had gotten home with another canister. Silent as a wraith, she entered the room, took a running leap, and landed on the lab table in front of Donnie with the grace of a cat. She lowered her head so that she was eye-to-eye with the turtles, looking from one to the other, and finally at the canister. Her point was made. It was time.

"I suppose explaining to her that the effects are unpredictable at best would be a waste of time," Donnie remarked.

"Probably," Leo said dryly.

Though there was something about her that made the others feel as if it was not permitted to touch Momma, Raph wasn't a bit shy about taking either side of her head in his hands and ruffling the fur. She met his gaze levelly, in a way she would never have looked at a human, or even another wolf or dog. But he was a mutant turtle, and that made him different.

"If this goes sideways, we'll make sure your kids are alright," Raph promised.

Momma reached forward, resting her muzzle on his shoulder where it met his neck for a brief moment. She didn't lick him, perhaps it was too intimate a gesture, or perhaps it was beneath her. But when she withdrew her head, she looked him in the face again, as if to commit the moment to memory.

"Okay, time to go," Leo said.

They had agreed to drive Momma and her pups out to the woods when the time came. If her brain melted and she turned vicious, it would keep her away from anyone she could hurt. If all went according to plan, she would take her pups and fade away into the woods she had so long craved. After that, it would be up to her what she would do. Like all the mutants the turtles had freed, all they could offer her was the freedom of choice.

Splinter watched them go, but did not ask where they were going. He seemed to have sensed that the time had come just as they did. Each of them picked up a pup on the way by except for Donnie, who was going to be doing the driving. Momma led the way to the Shellraiser and waited for someone to open the door for her before climbing in. She stayed up front and examined each pup as it was brought on board, going to her place at the back only once satisfied that all three were accounted for.

"You know she could wind up trying to kill us," Donnie told Leo as he slid behind the wheel, "It wouldn't be the first time someone lost themselves to a mutation."

"It's what she wants," Leo replied quietly, "And we really don't have anything else we can offer."

"This is ridiculous. She's a dog. We can't expect her to make decisions and understand their consequences. That's why people put dogs on leashes; dogs don't make good decisions."

Leo decided not to argue about all the reasons people kept dogs on leashes, which primarily was primarily because he didn't know any of them, and instead suggested, "Why don't you look her in the eye and say that."

He knew, of course, that Donnie couldn't do that. None of them could. To look her in the eye was enough for them to know she was no mere dog, and that she seemed to understand things they had not even begun to become aware of, much less make decisions about. The powerful gaze of the wolf has terrified and enthralled men throughout the ages, there is just something in the wolf's eyes that he loves, covets, and fears. The effect on the turtles might even have been more profound, though they had no basis for comparison. Perhaps that wolfen ancestry was all which glowed in Momma's eyes.

But none of the turtles were able to believe that.

* * *

After so many long, quiet drives recently, it was almost a relief to Leo when Raph and Mikey started fighting in the back. He'd been paying attention to the road ahead, and so had missed the build up, but it was rapidly apparent that Mikey had been playing some variation of I'm Not Touching You, and Raph had decided to change the game to I'm Touching You With My Fist, and the two were rolling around on the floor like complete idiots.

"The peace had to end sometime," Donnie muttered unhappily.

Strangely, Leo felt the opposite about it. Despite how often he wished Mikey would act more mature, and Raph less hot-headed, the fact was that this was, at last, a return to normalcy for both. Each had in his own way been wounded in the alley that night, and neither of them had fully healed. Even though Raph had been brought home, still Leo felt that he did not truly have all his brothers back.

Yet this abrupt and causeless scuffle in the backseat was in its essence a promise. A promise that Leo would have his brothers whole again, that they would not let the scars left by this change who they were, that they were still them, and that they were free. Free of the pain and guilt and fear of recent days, free to be who and what they were. The moment passed, but the hope it brought with it remained.

"Guys, come on, knock it off back there," Leo admonished, half against his will, "We don't want to draw attention to ourselves. Besides, you're distracting the driver."

"He started it," Raph grumbled, gesturing to Mikey.

"That's because I'm bored," Mikey shot back.

"I am not an entertainment system!" Raph snapped.

"Not if you do it wrong," Mikey said, rolling his eyes.

Something in the gesture or tone was apparently more than Raph could take, because he launched himself at Mikey again with a frustrated growl. Throughout this performance, neither had made slightest mention of the Game Boy Mikey had destroyed, as if they had carefully discussed the Rules of Engagement at some earlier time and agreed that was off limits.

In the bizarre scheme of the thing that was the brotherly relationship of Raph and Mikey, somehow trying to tear each other apart served only to bring them closer together. Still, Leo decided that he probably ought to be the parent in this situation, and he climbed into the back.

Leo was dimly surprised some time later to realize that he had somehow become involved in the wrestling match, and was just as much a participant as Raph and Mikey.

"Ow! Hey! Quit shoving!"

* * *

They didn't get to see Momma mutate. After unloading her and the pups to a secluded glen in the forest they'd driven to, they put down a bowl with some mutagen in it. Momma stood and looked at them, and in her silent way told them to leave. This was to be a private affair of hers.

Somehow it did not feel rude or even surprising that she would seek to undergo this change alone. She appreciated their help, it was obvious, but she had ever been a being apart. She had not belonged to her cage. She had not belonged to the dogs with whom she had been confined. She had not belonged to Irving Laurenson. And she certainly did not belong to the turtles.

She belonged to the wild. She always would.

And so, though the turtles were reluctant to leave, not knowing for sure what would become of her now, none of them suggested staying, and they did not remain nearby in hiding. Instead, they returned to the Shellraiser, out of sight of the glen, and waited.

They weren't sure what they were waiting for, but they knew they would recognize it when it happened.

The trees were covered in sheaths of frost, which rattled in the breeze. The sky was blue-gray overhead, promising a storm in the near future. Shadows and light played across the snow as the wind disturbed the branches of trees and brush, also stirred from time to time by unseen woodland animals.

And then a piercing cry shattered the stillness, ululant and mournful, but not fearful or in pain. The sound was reminiscent of a wolf, and had the almost barking quality of a dog, but the howl belonged to both and neither, and also to something else entirely. Something wilder than wild. Something unnatural, yet strangely wonderful. Something free. The sound of a promise fulfilled.

At last, the wolfdog was home.

* * *

_**A/N: Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, and goodnight everybody.**_


End file.
